Putting Buck v. Bell in Scientific and Historical Context: A Response to Victoria Nourse

In this article written for a law-review symposium in response to a presentation on the infamous 1927 U.S. Supreme Court opinion in Buck v. Bell, Edward J. Larson argues that, at the time that the case was decided, eugenics was on the incline, not the decline. In the 1920s, the American scientific and medical community broadly backed eugenic remedies for various forms of mental illness and retardation. Legislatures, lawyers, and jurists took their cue from this scientific and medical consensus. Absent any question that the statute at issue in Buck v. Bell was validly passed by the Virginia legislature or that due process was provided for the persons subject to its reach, the law should have withstood constitutional challenge. The tragedy of Buck v. Bell, Larson argues, was that Carrie Buck never received the due process guaranteed under Virginia’s eugenic sterilization statute and that neither her lawyers nor the courts protected her from a flagrant violation of her basic constitutional and statutory rights. Under the fact that should have been brought out at trial, Carrie Buck would not have been sterilized. More fundamentally, had due process been provided in this and other instances, while eugenics would still have been a scientific and medical mistake, it would not be a legal one

A Depth Study of Buck v. Bell, 274. U.S. 200

The Superintendent of the SCEFM, Dr. Albert S. Priddy, believed Carrie Buck to be feeble-minded. And, as required by law for sexual sterilization of inmates, he filed a petition to the Board of Directors of the SCEFM for the sterilization of Carrie Buck. The petition was granted by the Board on September lOth, 1924 and the performance of a salpingectomy on Carrie Buck was so ordered. The Virginia Sterilization Act also had a provision stipulating that the decision of the special board could be appealed by either party to the Circuit Court of jurisdiction. Action was brought against Dr. Priddy by RG. Shelton. Mr. Shelton was, at the time, named guardian and next friend of Carrie Buck. On October 3, 1924 Carrie Buck appealed the decision of the Board of the SCEFM to the Circuit Court of Amherst County. However, before the litigation was heard in the Circuit Court Dr. Priddy died and Dr. James Hendren Bell, the new Superintendent of the SCEFM, was substituted for Dr. Priddy as the defendant in the case. In a depth study of Buck v. Bell I first will trace the case through the Amherst County Circuit Court and the Supreme Court of Virginia. Then I will offer an explanation of the United States Supreme Court Decision. Lastly I will discuss the legal, social, and political implications of Buck v. Bell

Buck v. Bell: Eighty Years of Challenges for Parents with Developmental Disabilities

On May 2nd, 1927, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes delivered the Supreme Court‟s decision in the case of Carrie Buck v. J.H. Bell (Smith & Nelson, 1989). In the majority opinion, Holmes stated that, “It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute 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...” (Smith & Nelson, 1989, p.178). Thus, it was determined that “three generations of imbeciles [were] enough”, and the poster woman for American eugenics would be a victim of involuntary sterilization (Smith & Nelson, 1989, p.178). Perhaps unknown to Holmes, the outcome of Buck v. Bell was far-reaching beyond just Carrie Buck. This monumental court decision opened the door for many states, including Virginia, to enact a sterilization law. In addition, it helped nurture a stigma against people with disabilities as being unfit for life and parenting. The stigma can still be seen today in both social and political contexts as noted in contemporary court cases (e.g., Holtz v. Holtz and Hankins v. Hankins)

Thoughts on the changing meaning of disability: New eugenics or new wholeness?

In 1927, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of a Virginia law in the case that came to be known as Buck v. Bell ( 1927). Carrie Buck was the first person to be eugenically sterilized under the authority of that law. The law allowed a state to sterilize people diagnosed as incompetent and deemed likely to genetically transmit physical, psychological, or social disabilities to their offspring

Disabling Lawyering: \u3cem\u3eBuck v. Bell\u3c/em\u3e and the Road to a More Inclusive Legal Practice

A Review of Demystifying Disability: What to Know, What to Say, and How to Be and Ally. By Emily Ladau and Three Generations, No Imbeciles: Eugenics, the Supreme Court, and Buck v. Bell By Paul A. Lombardo

To Speak or Not to Speak, That Is Your Liberty: \u3ci\u3eJanus v. AFSCME\u3c/i\u3e

Some Supreme Court precedents go through extensive death spasms before being interred. Lochner v. New York, Plessy v. Ferguson, and Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce come to mind. Others like Chisholm v. Georgia and Minersville School District v. Gobitis incurred a swift and summary execution. Still others, overtaken by subsequent cases, remain wraith-like presences among the Court’s past acts: Beauharnais v. Illinois and Buck v. Bell, for example, remain “on the books.

“The Cruelty Is the Point”: Using Buck v. Bell as a Tool for Diversifying Instruction in the Law School Classroom

Instructors who are looking for opportunities to expose their students to the ways in which intersectional forms of bias impact policy and legal rules can use Buck v. Bell to explore, for instance, the impact of disability and class on the formation of doctrine. A different intersectional approach might use the discussion of the case as a gateway to a broader conversation about the ways in which race and gender bias structured the implementation of sterilization policies around the nation. Finally, those who wish to examine the global impact of American forms of bias can use this case and the sterilization policies that were enforced in its wake to identify the relationship between those biases and the propagation of the Nazi plan to implement mass genocide. Buck v. Bell provides a unique and rich opportunity to explore the harms that flow from institutionalized racism, classism, ableism, and sexism in the domestic and international spheres

The Soldier and the Imbecile: How Holmes\u27s Manliness Fated Carrie Buck

The Supreme Court case of Buck v. Bell, while never overturned, endures in infamy among those who know it. For in that case the Court had tacitly sanctioned what Adolph Hitler made unequivocally evil a few years after the Court’s adjudication: eugenics. However, the case was only partly about that. Indeed, I will argue in this essay that the Court’s opinion, written by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, turned perhaps more significantly on the trope of manliness as an organizing theme. In a sense Holmes was filtering the facts of Buck through his own ordeals and triumphs with manliness, particularly as they were experienced through his service as a combat soldier in the Civil War