Juridical racialism

Juridical racialism is a term coined by professor Mark S. Weiner in his book Americans Without Law: The Racial Boundaries of Citizenship. Juridical racialism is a civic rhetoric or discourse through which the racial boundaries of civic life are defined based on the perceived capacity of minority groups for specific forms of legal behavior.

The concept of juridical racialism is meant to explain the phenomena of race being used as the primary factor is determining equality under the law, rather than class, gender, or age. The notion of race as being the chief consideration in disputes can be traced from areas such as the Civil War to the jurisprudence of judges in notable court cases.

History
Perhaps the first prominent usages of juridical racialism occurred immediately after the Civil War in a time named by President Ulysses S Grant as the assimilationist era. During this time, the federal government attempted to force Native Americans to adopt Euro-American styles of living. Under the Dawes Act passed during this era, the United States was given the power to totally alter the property regimes of scores of individual societies.

Juridical racialism manifested itself in the case of the Native American Crow Dog (Ex Parte Crow Dog). In 1881, medicine man Crow Dog who opposed the United States' involvement in Indian affairs killed a fellow Native American Spotted Tail during a dispute. In accordance with current laws, Crow Dog was dealt with under Sioux tribal law, however the Bureau of Indian Affairs used the incident to test the federal government's supposed jurisdiction in Native American lands. After being brought to trial, it was the opinion of the court that Crow Dog should be set free. However, the matter was not due to the sovereignty of the tribe but rather the ambiguous nature of the statute in question. According to Justice Thomas Stanley Matthews, the language used to in the Act was awkward because it invoked the term "orderly government" which had to be read in the context of clear ethno-legal differences between Euro-Americans and Native Americans.

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