| Buck v. Bell | | Supreme Court of the United States | Argued April 22, 1927
Decided May 2, 1927
| | | Full case name: | Carrie Buck v. James Hendren Bell, Superintendent of State Colony for Epileptics and Feeble Minded | | | | Citations: | 274 U.S. 200; 47 S. Ct. 584; 71 L. Ed. 1000; 1927 U.S. LEXIS 20 | | | | Prior history: | Error to the Supreme Court of Appeals of the State of Virginia | | | | | Holding | | The Court upheld a statute instituting compulsory sterilization of the mentally retarded "for the protection and health of the state." | | Court membership | Chief Justice: William Howard Taft
Associate Justices: Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Willis Van Devanter, James Clark McReynolds, Louis Brandeis, George Sutherland, Pierce Butler, Edward Terry Sanford, Harlan Fiske Stone | | Case opinions | Majority by: Holmes
Joined by: Taft, Van Devanter, McReynolds, Brandeis, Sutherland, Sanford, Stone
Dissent by: Butler
| | Laws applied | | U.S. Const. amend. XIV | Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200 (1927), was the United States Supreme Court ruling that upheld a statute instituting compulsory sterilization of the mentally retarded "for the protection and health of the state." It was largely seen as an endorsement of negative eugenics—the attempt to improve the human race by eliminating "defectives" from the gene pool. Image File history File links Seal_of_the_United_States_Supreme_Court. ...
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Compulsory sterilization programs are government policies which attempt to force people to undergo surgical sterilization. ...
Mental retardation is a term for a pattern of persistently slow learning of basic motor and language skills (milestones) during childhood, and a significantly below-normal global intellectual capacity as an adult. ...
William Howard Taft (September 15, 1857 – March 8, 1930) was an American politician, the 27th President of the United States, the 10th Chief Justice of the United States, a leader of the progressive conservative wing of the Republican Party in the early 20th century, a pioneer in international arbitration and...
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. ...
Willis Van Devanter (April 17, 1859 - February 8, 1941), associate justice of the United States Supreme Court, January 3, 1911 to June 2, 1937. ...
Justice McReynolds, c. ...
Louis Dembitz Brandeis (November 13, 1856 – October 5, 1941) was an American litigator, Supreme Court Justice, advocate of privacy, and developer of the Brandeis Brief. ...
George Sutherland (March 25, 1862 – July 18, 1942) was an English-born U.S. jurist and political figure. ...
Pierce Butler (March 17, 1866 – November 16, 1939) was an American jurist who served as an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court from 1923 until his death in 1939. ...
Edward Terry Sanford (July 23, 1865-March 8, 1930) was an American jurist who served on the United States Supreme Court. ...
Harlan Fiske Stone (October 11, 1872 – April 22, 1946) was an American lawyer and jurist who served as the dean of Columbia Law School, Attorney General of the United States, Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court and later Chief Justice of the United States. ...
Amendment XIV in the National Archives The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution (Amendment XIV) is one of the post-Civil War amendments, intended to secure rights for former slaves. ...
Federal courts Supreme Court Chief Justice Associate Justices Elections Presidential elections Midterm elections Political Parties Democratic Republican Third parties State & Local government Governors Legislatures (List) State Courts Counties, Cities, and Towns Other countries Politics Portal The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest judicial body in the...
Compulsory sterilization programs are government policies which attempt to force people to undergo surgical sterilization. ...
Mental retardation is a term for a pattern of persistently slow learning of basic motor and language skills (milestones) during childhood, and a significantly below-normal global intellectual capacity as an adult. ...
Eugenics is the self-direction of human evolution: Logo from the Second International Congress of Eugenics, 1921, depicting it as a tree which unites a variety of different fields. ...
The gene pool of a species or a population is the complete set of unique alleles that would be found by inspecting the genetic material of every living member of that species or population. ...
Background
In 1924, the state of Virginia adopted a statute authorizing the compulsory sterilization of the mentally retarded for the purpose of eugenics. On September 10 of the same year, Dr. Albert Sidney Priddy, superintendent of the Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded, filed a petition to his Board of Directors to sterilize Carrie Buck, an 18-year-old patient at his institution whom he claimed had a mental age of 9. Priddy maintained that Buck represented a genetic threat to society. According to Priddy, Buck's 52-year-old mother possessed a mental age of 8 and had a record of prostitution and immorality. She had three children without good knowledge of their parentage. Carrie, one of these children, had been adopted and attended school for five years, reaching the level of sixth grade. However, according to Priddy, she had eventually proved to be "incorrigible" and eventually gave birth to an illegitimate child. Her adopted family had committed her to the State Colony as "feeble-minded" (a catch-all term used at the time for the mentally disabled), no longer feeling capable of caring for her. It was later discovered that Carrie's pregnancy was not caused by any act of "immorality" on her own part. In the summer of 1923, while her adoptive mother was away "on account of some illness," her nephew raped Carrie, and her later commitment has been seen as an attempt by the family to save their reputation. 1924 (MCMXXIV) was a leap year starting on Tuesday (link will display the full calendar). ...
Official language(s) English Capital Richmond Largest city Virginia Beach Area Ranked 35th - Total 42,793 sq mi (110,862 km²) - Width 200 miles (320 km) - Length 430 miles (690 km) - % water 7. ...
Compulsory sterilization programs are government policies which attempt to force people to undergo surgical sterilization. ...
Mental retardation (abbreviated as MR), is a term for a pattern of persistently slow learning of basic motor and language skills (milestones) during childhood, and a significantly below-normal intellectual capacity as an adult. ...
Eugenics is the self-direction of human evolution: Logo from the Second International Congress of Eugenics, 1921, depicting it as a tree which unites a variety of different fields. ...
Categories: People stubs | 1906 births | 1983 deaths ...
Whore redirects here. ...
Morality is a complex of principles based on cultural, religious, and philosophical concepts and beliefs, by which an individual determines whether his or her actions are right or wrong. ...
Feeble-minded was a term used from the late 19th century through the early 20th century to loosely describe a variety of mental deficiencies, including what would now be considered mental retardation in its various types and grades, and learning disabilities such as dyslexia. ...
Download high resolution version (309x800, 147 KB)Carrie Buck, of Buck v. ...
Download high resolution version (309x800, 147 KB)Carrie Buck, of Buck v. ...
Compulsory sterilization programs are government policies which attempt to force people to undergo surgical sterilization. ...
The case While the litigation was making its way through the court system, Priddy died and his successor, Dr. James Hendren Bell, was substituted to the case. The Board of Directors issued an order for the sterilization of Buck, and her guardian appealed the case to the Circuit Court of Amherst County, which sustained the decision of the Board. The case then moved to the Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia. Circuit courts previously were United States federal courts established in each federal judicial district. ...
The Supreme Court of Virginia is one of the oldest continuously active judicial bodies in the United States. ...
Buck's lawyer, Irving Whitehead, poorly argued her case, failed to call important witnesses, and was remarked by commentators to often not know what side he was on. It is now thought that this was not because of incompetence, but deliberate. Whitehead had close connections both to the counsel for the institution, and Priddy himself. He was also a member of the governing board of the state institution in which Buck resided, and had personally authorized Priddy's sterilization requests and was a strong supporter of eugenic sterilization. The appellate court sustained the sterilization law as compliant with both the state and federal constitutions, and it then went to the United States Supreme Court. The plaintiff's lawyers argued that this procedure ran counter to the protections of the 14th Amendment. The Supreme Court Building, Washington, D.C. The Supreme Court Building, Washington, D.C., (large image) The Supreme Court of the United States, located in Washington, D.C., is the highest court (see supreme court) in the United States; that is, it has ultimate judicial authority within the United States...
Amendment XIV in the National Archives The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution (Amendment XIV) is one of the post-Civil War amendments, intended to secure rights for former slaves. ...
On May 2, 1927, in an 8-1 decision, the Court accepted that she, her mother and her daughter were "feeble-minded" and "promiscuous," and that it was in the state's interest to have her sterilized. The ruling legitimized Virginia's sterilization procedures until they were repealed in 1974. May 2 is the 122nd day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (123rd in leap years). ...
1927 (MCMXXVII) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will display full calendar). ...
The ruling was written by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.. In support of his argument that the interest of the states in a "pure" gene pool outweighed the interest of individuals in their bodily integrity, he argued: Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. ...
- We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, in order to prevent our being swamped with incompetence. It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes.
Holmes concluded his argument with the infamous phrase: - Three generations of imbeciles are enough.
The sole dissenter in the court, Justice Pierce Butler, declined to write a minority opinion. Pierce Butler (March 17, 1866 – November 16, 1939) was an American jurist who served as an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court from 1923 until his death in 1939. ...
Carrie Buck was operated upon, receiving a compulsory salpingectomy (a form of tubal ligation). She was later paroled from the institution as a domestic worker to a family in Bland, Virginia. She was an avid reader until her death in 1983. Her daughter Vivian, who was also sterilized, did very well in her two years of schooling, once being on the school's honor roll. She died at the age of eight. Tubal ligation is a permanent, but sometimes reversible form of female sterilization, in which the fallopian tubes are severed and sealed, in order to prevent fertilization. ...
The historian Paul A. Lombardo has influentially argued in a 1985 article in the New York University Law Review that Buck was not only not "feeble-minded" at all, but that the entire case was built around the fact that Carrie was raped by the nephew of her adoptive mother.
The effect of the ruling
 Dr. James H. Bell was the superintendent at the Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded. The effect of Buck v. Bell was to legitimize eugenic sterilization laws in the United States as a whole. While many states already had sterilization laws on their books, their use was erratic and effects practically non-existent in every state except for California. After Buck v. Bell, dozens of states added new sterilization statutes, or updated their constitutionally non-functional ones already enacted, with statutes which more closely mirrored the Virginia statute upheld by the Court. James H. Bell of Buck v. ...
James H. Bell of Buck v. ...
Compulsory sterilization programs sprouted up in many countries at the beginning of the 20th century, usually as part of a program of negative eugenics -- to prevent undesirable members of the population from reproducing. ...
Official language(s) English Capital Sacramento Largest city Los Angeles Area Ranked 3rd - Total 158,302 sq mi (410,000 km²) - Width 250 miles (400 km) - Length 770 miles (1,240 km) - % water 4. ...
The Virginia statute which the ruling of Buck v. Bell supported was designed in part by the eugenicist Harry H. Laughlin, superintendent of Charles Benedict Davenport's Eugenics Record Office in Cold Spring Harbor, New York. Laughlin had a few years previously conducted a number of studies on the enforcement of sterilization legislation throughout the country and had concluded that the reason for their lack of use was primarily that the physicians who would order the sterilizations were afraid of prosecution by patients whom they operated upon. Laughlin saw the need to create a "Model Law"[1] which could withstand a test of constitutional scrutiny, clearing the way for future sterilization operations. Harry H. Laughlin Harry Hamilton Laughlin (March 11, 1880 – January 26, 1943) was a leading American eugenicist in the first half of the 20th century. ...
Charles Benedict Davenport (June 1, 1866 — February 18, 1944) was a prominent American biologist and eugenicist. ...
The Eugenics Record Office at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in Cold Spring Harbor, New York was a center for eugenics and human heredity research in the first half of the twentieth century. ...
Cold Spring Harbor is a hamlet (and census-designated place) in Suffolk County, New York on the North Shore of Long Island. ...
Sterilization rates under eugenic laws in the United States climbed from 1927 until Skinner v. Oklahoma, 316 U.S. 535 (1942). While Skinner v. Oklahoma did not specifically overturn Buck v. Bell, it created enough of a legal quandary to discourage many sterilizations. By 1963, sterilization laws were almost wholly out of use, though some remained officially on the books for many years. Virginia's state sterilization law was repealed in 1974. Skinner v. ...
The story of Carrie Buck's sterilization and the court case was made into a television drama in 1994, Against Her Will: The Carrie Buck Story. 1994 (MCMXCIV) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated as the International Year of the Family and the International Year of the Sport and the Olympic Ideal by United Nations. ...
See also Skinner v. ...
Holding A judge will not be deprived of immunity because the action he took was in error, was done maliciously, or was in excess of his authority. ...
Poe v. ...
The United States Supreme Court and various U.S. state courts have decided several cases regarding pornography, sexual activity, and reproductive rights. ...
The Racial Integrity Act of 1924 of Virginia, United States, was a law that had required that a racial description of every person be recorded at birth, and prevented marriage between white persons and non-white persons. ...
External links
References - Gould, Stephen Jay. "Carrie Buck's Daughter". Reprinted in The Flamingo's Smile, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1985: 307-313.
- Kevles, Daniel J. In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity. New York: Knopf, 1985.
- Lombardo, Paul A. "Three Generations, No Imbeciles: New Light on Buck v. Bell," New York University Law Review 60:1 (1985): 50-62.
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