The Slaughterhouse Cases: Regulation, Reconstruction and the Fourteenth Amendment (Landmark Law Cases & American Society)

Jonathan Lurie

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0700612904 ISBN 13: 9780700612901

Publisher: University Press of Kansas, 2003

The Slaughterhouse Cases The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1868, sought to protect the rights of the newly freed slaves; but its first important test did not arise until five years later. When it did, it centered on a vitriolic dispute among the white butchers of mid-Reconstruction New Orleans. The rough-and-tumble world of nineteenth-century New Orleans was a sanitation nightmare, with the city's many slaughterhouses dumping animal remains into neighboring backwaters. When Louisiana finally authorized a monopoly slaughterhouse to bring about sanitation reform, many butchers felt disenfranchised from their livelihoods. Framing their case as an infringement of...

Product Description:

The Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, ratified in 1868, sought to protect the rights of newly freed slaves, but it was first put to the test in a row between the butchers and state of New Orleans five years later. This study analyses the case and the controversial Supreme Court decision.

Review:

Labb and Lurie have painted, with graceful style, a magnificent panorama of a key episode of nineteenth-century legal history. . . . From their vivid description of the public health hazards afflicting nineteenth-century New Orleans to their superb chapter surveying the Supreme Court led by Chief Justice Chase, this is compellingly readable history.Journal of American History

The authors have done a remarkable job unraveling the complex threads of this intriguing legal history.Louisiana History

An outstanding book, deeply researched and beautifully written. The authors examine with great skill and care the social and political background, and the legal implications, of one of the pivotal cases of American constitutional history. In every way this is a vivid, intriguing, illuminating case study: a model for work of this kind.Lawrence M. Friedman, author of A History of American Law

Just about everyone who studies the Fourteenth Amendment addresses the Slaughterhouse Cases, but this is the first book to focus so completely on the case itself. . . . An excellent book that fills a significant gap.Paul Kens, author of Lochner v. New York: Economic Regulation on Trial

A superb work that tells a lively and compelling story.Herbert Hovenkamp, author of Enterprise and American Law, 18361937