Talk:Hugo Black

message: The phrase "maintained his commitment to racial equality" is not POV.  It is something which is true or false.  Do you have an encyclopedic source that states that Black was not committed to racial equality in the 1960s?  The general opinion is that he was. My main objection is that you are calling things POV which really are not, even though I think most of your edits when you called the earlier text POV are OK.  The latest edit again added redundant material to the article, about Korematsu, that did not make too much sense in relation to Harper, and removed accurate material (these --> this) concerning his philosophy, the topic of this section.  So I am (mainly) reverting, with a little modification.  John Z 19:08, 9 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I disagree very strongly. The phrase "maintained his commitment to racial equality" is POV on several counts. First, it presumes that Black was "committed to racial equality" to begin with. That's a very dubious contention by any count for somebody who was a well known member of the KKK, and thus something that is POV to assert about Black. Perhaps in your _opinion_ he was "committed to racial equality" - but it's just that - an opinion. Others would look at the fact of his Klan membership, the Coyle trial, and other similar events and reach a very different conclusion. But let's assume for a moment you were right that Black was "committed to racial equality." The next question thus becomes "did he maintain that committment on the court?" Again, this is a POV assertion because there is considerable evidence that could go either way. On the one hand you have his vote in cases like Brown v. Board that are pro civil rights. On the other hand though there are cases like Korematsu (authored by Black), which is frequently compared to such other luminaries of "racial equality" as Plessy v. Ferguson and Dred Scott. Your request that I demonstrate "that Black was not committed to racial equality" is a request to prove a negative, which is logically impossible and thus may be disregarded. I'm accordingly restoring the material on NPOV grounds and ask that you consider maintaining a more neutral sense of wording when editing this article in the future. Thanks. Rangerdude 05:31, 11 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Rangerdude, I am not married to the phrase, its not mine, and I did not readd it - but do you honestly disagree that the general opinion is that Black was committed to racial equality in the 60's, which I weakened it to, and eliminates Korematsu? I could dig up such a phrase I am sure out of any biography of Black, I've read some, but don't happen to have one at hand.  A (practically) universal opinion is not usually "a very dubious contention" nor POV.  I didn't request you to prove a negative, just - out of curiosity - to provide a source that shared what apparently is your opinion, specifically concerning the 60s.  If there are no encyclopedic sources sharing one's opinion, one runs the danger of inadvertently putting OR in also.  Sure he was in the KKK.  People change.  The old joke about him, which should probably be in the article, is that "Hugo Black used to run around in white robes scaring black people.  Now he runs around in black robes scaring white ones."  I gave some other reasoning about flaws I saw in this edit; in general I just think you use the words POV too loosely - even when I think your edits are OK.   These --> this makes little sense to me, as does repeating about Korematsu.  I'll try to compromise, making these minor changes to your last edit. John Z 10:28, 13 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The problem was not that it was weakened to the 1960's timeframe but that it was worded in such a way as to convey that Black maintained a committment to racial equality in the 1960's. This is POV because it assumes that he had a committment to racial equality before the 1960's as well that he was "maintaining," and as you know Black's civil rights history ESPECIALLY before the 1960's was very checkered. It's one thing to say that people change, but being a Klansman and author of a court opinion to imprison people just because they're Japanese are pretty big mistakes to overcome by any standard. Presenting Black as if he was some sort of hero and champion on civil rights when in fact his record - even on the court - is mixed at best trivializes those other sordid events in his career. I also don't see the basis for your objection to repeating Korematsu. It's only mentioned in the article twice with the edit and once without it. Korematsu is one of the most notable and infamous cases of the 20th century and arguably Black's most famous opinion. It's not as if the case's details are being restated in a redundancy. It's just being named in context of his decisions that are not seen as pro-civil rights. Rangerdude 15:57, 13 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I think you should go back and read my edit that you are complaining about, and reverted, which I no longer put in the article, and which did not contain or imply "maintain" in any way.  Thus your POV criticisms are misguided here at least, and as I said, you use the word too frequently.  I think you greatly underappreciate the more important theoretical contribution of Black, his pushing of incorporation, which he basically and rightly imho won over the long haul, against quite a lot of criticism, much of it irrational and unjust (e.g. Fairman), and in the context of middle 20th century jurisprudence was a very major contribution to civil rights.  Again, I think that this characterization, as well as him as more "liberal" than "conservative", as more pro than anti civil rights whatever these words mean is nothing but the general opinion, and opposing it should make one careful of doing original research. John Z 17:55, 13 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Racial equality etc

message: Hugo Black joined the decision Palko v. Connecticut that denied incorporation of protection against double jeopardy, so he later changed his mind and advocated incorporation of the entire Bill of Rights? WooyiTalk, Editor review 14:37, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Incorporation

message: I was just reading a new paper on the economics of the 1920s Klan by Steven Levitt and Roland G. Fryer Jr, Hatred and Profits: Getting Under the Hood of the Ku Klux Klan which mentions:
In Alabama, it [the Klan] ended the career of veteran Senator Oscar Underwood, whom it
denounced as the “Jew, jug, and Jesuit candidate,” and replaced him with Hugo Black, who
accepted an engraved life membership in the KKK (Morison 1980).
The Morison reference is to: Morison, Samuel, Commager, Henry, and Leuchtenburg, William. The Growth of the American Republic. 1980. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
I hesitate to include the "lifetime membership" bit in the article without having run down and reviewed that citation, which I know I won't have time to do. If anyone else has the time, have at it... Studerby 22:15, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Klan - "lifetime membership"

message: This article has been reviewed as part of Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles/Project quality task force in an effort to ensure all listed Good articles continue to meet the Good article criteria. In reviewing the article, I have found there are some issues that may need to be addressed. 
1) This article needs better citations. I put appropriate tugs throughout it.
2) Wikilinks for non-existant articles (which are red) should be removed.
I will check back in no less than seven days. If progress is being made and issues are addressed, the article will remain listed as a Good article. Otherwise, it may be delisted (such a decision may be challenged through WP:GAR). If improved after it has been delisted, it may be nominated at WP:GAN. Feel free to drop a message on my talk page if you have any questions, and many thanks for all the hard work that has gone into this article thus far. Regards, Ruslik 07:10, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: GA Sweeps (on hold)

message: He is noted as the author of one of the references.  There is a wiki link, but it leads to a disambiguation page, and I don't know if this is Jr. or Sr.  This needs to be fixed. 
7&6=thirteen (talk) 18:44, 29 April 2008
(UTC) Stan
::Jr. wrote it.  Fixed in the article.  7&6=thirteen (talk) 01:45, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Arthur Schlesinger]]

message: I put it into the article at its first appearance in the body.  There is a second appearance which also has a wiki link, and I am not sure whether it should be left there.  Just calling the issue to your attention.  I know that there are a lot of people who have worked on this article, and I am trying to be respectful of your viewpoints.  Thanks.  7&6=thirteen (talk) 13:05, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Wiki link to First Amendment of U.S. Constitution

message: If any further uncited sentences are added to Black's article, I will personally remove them, as I have spent a lot of time citing everything to date. RafaelRGarcia (talk) 01:04, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: "Citation Needed"

message: 7&6=thirteen (talk) 11:16, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Fixed  Put it in different form.  7&6=thirteen (talk) 13:26, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: External link reads awkwardly

message: A subpage at Hugo Lafayette Black/fjc was automatically created by a perl script, based on this article at the Biographical Directory of Federal Judges. The subpage should either be merged into this article, or moved and disambiguated. Polbot (talk) 13:43, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Bot-created subpage

message: With regard to Black's KKK membership, his role in the defense of a fellow Klansman for the murder of James Coyle would seem to warrant inclusion here.
The sidebar links to the University of Birmingham Medical School in the UK.  Whatever medical school existed in Birmingham then likely has no contemporary successor, as the forerunner of the UAB School of Medicine was then located in Mobile.Moioci (talk) 02:27, 24 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Some minor points

message: This, from New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713, 714 (1971).:
I would propose to include this short sentence somewhere in the article.
Picodoro (talk) 04:29, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Which I've done right now. Feel free to rb if my edit was excessively bold. Picodoro (talk) 04:45, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: What is it that Black is most famous for?

message: One editor is erasing solid information he calls "undue". He misunderstands the WP rules. "Undue" is a technical term meaning excessive weight to a minority viewpoint. (WP:Undue Neutrality requires that each article or other page in the mainspace fairly represents all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint. Giving due weight and avoiding giving undue weight means that articles should not give minority views as much of or as detailed a description as more widely held views.)  The viewpoint that Black was strongly anti-Catholic is affirmed by a majority of scholars and  disputed hardly at all. Therefore it has to be given greater weight. If there are alternative viewpoints to the effect that Black's anticatholicism did not affect his decisions, they should be included. So far no editor has included any. Professors at a university or law school writing in their expertise are considered RS, even if an editor dislikes their opinions.  Philip Hamburger holds an  endowed chair at Columbia Law School, and before that an endowed chair at the U of Chicago Law School--that that is pretty distinguished in the world of legal scholarship. Jay Sekulow, has published a major book by a leading publisher Witnessing their faith: religious influence on Supreme Court justices and their Opinions (Rowman & Littlefield, 2006) which entitles him to RS status unless very strong evidence to the contrary is presented.  His views accord with the Black biographers.  ArtifexMayhem has no sources to back up his personal viewpoints, which are merely POV Rjensen (talk) 15:21, 10 September 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: ok, oh my goodness.  i don't think anyone's disputing that black was anti-catholic.  i think that the question is, as i said above, whether his views on the separation of church and state were for the most part a result of his anticatholicism.  this seems to me to be unprovable and therefore only subject to plausibility arguments.  it may well be that there are plausible arguments to be made, and we should include a discussion of those to be sure, but since the position is hardly subject to hard proof, e.g. a letter from black saying "this decision will fuck up the catholics, ha ha!", it seems quite probable that scholars who found no evidence for the position and felt that it was implausible might just not mention it, rather than argue against it.  this is often how historiography works in such plausibly arguable cases which are not subject to proof.  thus there may not be a lot of sources who can balance the view, but that wouldn't mean that the view was generally accepted. anyway, i got the hamburger book yesterday, and am reading it now.  i have to say that i personally am quite happy with killerchihuahua's version of things at this start of today's kerfuffle, but i may change my mind on further reading. (p.s., wp doesn't have many rules, they're more policies, and subject to revision themselves.  i think that this is worth keeping in mind.) — alf.laylah.wa.laylah (talk) 16:49, 10 September 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: We have to rely on published RS and if they are silent on an issue then it's hard to quote them.  The attack by Hamburger is rather recent and I have seen no defenses of Black so far. Indeed some RS may soon be published that defends him, in which case that must be noticed.  For that matter the consensus of scholarly debate might some day swing to the view that his intense anti-Catholicism did not influence his views on religious issues, but that has not started yet. We know he did campaign in 1926 by attacking Catholicism which will be hard to explain away.  As for the summary of Hamburger, alf may indeed come up with a better one than that published by a law professor. Rjensen (talk) 17:12, 10 September 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: look, wp doesn't rely on credentials, but on consensus, so it's no use trying to say that i'm not as qualified as a law professor.  it's irrelevant to the discussion. we don't traffic in the Argumentum ad verecundiam.  anyway, for all you know, i am a law professor. maybe we're all law professors.  it's just not relevant. — alf.laylah.wa.laylah (talk) 17:18, 10 September 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: WP Undue rules

message: i propose that we create two new sections here, one for discussion of the kkk and anticatholicism section of the article, and one for discussion of the separation of church and state section.  the discussion is getting too diffuse for me to follow otherwise.  perhaps my fellow editors will join me in accepting this method?  if not, well, we can keep on adding to other sections. i'm only creating one on the kkk and anticatholicism section of the article right this second, because that's the only one i have a comment on. — alf.laylah.wa.laylah (talk) 17:15, 10 September 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  two sections for anticatholicism and for separation of c & s? 

message: I think the KKK section should talk about how it was very strong in Alabama (1920's) at the time and around the whole country to give people more an idea of why he joined it.  You couldn't be elected in certain states unless you were in or endorsed by the Klan.  And at that time, the Klan was mainstream and accepted in lots of states.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.15.193.181 (talk) 05:45, 12 January 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  KKK 

message: Black's dissent In re Anastaplo "would immortalize Anastaplo", exclaimed Justice Brennan upon reading it. It was read, by Black's own instructions, at Black's funeral service. 
The new article George Anastaplo deserves reading and improvement, particularly by those with books or articles on Black. Kiefer.Wolfowitz 11:18, 20 July 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  George Anastaplo, "immortalized" by Black 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Subject to further discussion, I'm going to move the section about KKK and anti-Catholicism to later in the article. It's the sort of material that usually falls under a "controversies" heading, and those headings typically follow sections discussing the person's major life achievements.  His Klan participation is significant because he was a Senator and Justice, not the other way around.  Nor is the section's placement entirely justified by chronology, because it jumps around throughout his career. Reading through the Talk, there seems to have been a lot of discussion about the length and substance of the Klan materials being disproportionate.  I tend to agree, but that's another issue.  John2510 (talk) 16:27, 27 January 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Placement of KKK/Anticatholicism Discussion 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: I added a small line at the end of the section regarding "Anti-Catholicism" referencing Black's enthusiasm for what Blanshard wrote in his books.  As one of his sons noted:
The Ku Klux Klan and Daddy, so far as I could tell, had one thing in common.  He suspected the Catholic Church.  He used to read all of Paul Blanshard's books exposing the power abuse in the Catholic Church.  He thought the Pope and bishops had too much power and property.  He resented the fact that rental property owned by the Church was not taxed; he felt they got most of their revenue from the poor and did not return enough of it. Progressingamerica (talk) 16:24, 24 October 2020 (UTC)
thread_title: Paul Blanshard's work

message: Noah Feldman has described Justice Black as one of the creators of originalism. Should thus be added to his page? 3Kingdoms (talk) 23:14, 23 November 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Originalism