From:
David Cifuentes
Question: Dear Ms. Kline,
Can you please guide me to a resource that will tell me for
which decisions the US Supreme Court has reversed itself?
Answer: Dear Mr. Cifuentes,
There is no easy answer to your question.
First of all, there’s the problem of terminology. The Supreme
Court never officially reverses its decisions. Once a case is
decided, the decision stands. What happens is that the Court reverses
its views on a precedent set in one of its earlier ruling. To
make things interesting, the Court doesn’t always make it
clear that it’s modifying or ignoring an earlier precedent
– that’s left to lawyers who study the Court’s
opinions.
I cannot find anything close to a complete list of instances in
which the Court has, by general agreement, reversed itself on
a precedent. These books, however, study the question, and the
cases they discuss will help you create a working list:
Brenner, Saul. Stare Indecisis : The Alteration of Precedent
on the Supreme Court, 1946-1992. Cambridge University Press,
1995. (This book does, at least, list the cases where precedent
was “altered” 1946-1992).
Hansford, Thomas G. The Politics of Precedent on the U.S.
Supreme Court. Princeton University Press, c2006.
Spaeth, Harold J. Majority Rule or Minority Will : Adherence
to Precedent on the U.S. Supreme Court. Cambridge University
Press, 1999.
Mary-Jo Kline
From: Cheri Hood
Question: Hello,
I was wondering if you knew where I could find some information
on how students were taught (both in black schools and white ones)
about slavery in the 1960’s – 80’s. How the
perspective changed after the civil rights movement, and if the
content information taught changed. If you know where I could
actually access curriculum used in schools that would be very
helpful also. Thanks.
Answer: Dear Ms. Hood:
Everyone at History Now agrees that yours is one of the
most interesting and worthwhile questions we've received in a
long time! Congratulations to you.
You might want to expand your timeline a little -- take a look
at some pre-1960 examples of teaching history in the classroom
-- this will give you some even sharper examples for "compare
and contrast." There's a lot to be said for showing off the
perfectly dreadful and not just the "pretty awful."
You'll probably want to go to the ERIC Website and choose "Advanced
Search":
http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/
Home.portal?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=advanced
Once you're there, I'd suggest you type in "Slavery"
on one "Keyword" search screen and "Teaching"
in another "Keyword" search slot. Then hit the button
-- you'll get 249 results, but you can review them quickly --
ERIC gives you a good abstract summarizing the contents of each
book or article. You'll quickly reduce your choices to a dozen
or two candidates.
If your local library doesn't have all of these resources, introduce
yourself to its "interlibrary loan" service. You probably
know about it already, but if you don't, you're in for a wonderful
surprise -- and articles from journals will probably come in faster
than books because the "distant" librarian just needs
to scan the pages and send them over the Internet.
If you or a member of your family has access to the resources
at your college Library, you may find it easier to work through
them -- they'll have many of the books that won't be on a public
library's shelves, and they may have easier interlibrary loan
access to journal articles -- or even some nifty online links
to the journals themselves.
Do you know how to use "WorldCat"? If not, ask your
school librarian for a quick tutorial. WorldCat will give you
a list of books with full records, which often includes the title
of every chapter -- and for collections of essays, this is invaluable.
You can decide in advance what you may want to see. (Again, interlibrary
loan will be your best friend.)
As you probably know by now, Google searches are of limited use
for your research. The lesson plans you find by searching "slavery
teaching" or "slavery lesson plans" are largely
post-1990.
I'd suggest that you take a look at this article online if you
haven't already:
http://www.oah.org/pubs/magazine/antebellumslavery/odonovan.html
Keep us posted on your work. We're all fascinated.
Mary-Jo Kline
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