SOC446H5 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: White Supremacy, White Southerners, Private Law
Document Summary
Week 10 reading: litigating against civil rights: litigation - the process of taking legal action, general information: litigation against social change functions different. It discusses how litigation served jim crow"s defenders in different ways, sometimes operating to suppress civil rights activity, sometimes operating to preserve jim crow laws and practices. It considers the potential benefits of litigation as a tool of movement mobilization-benefits that transcended the outcome of particular court battles: part v explores the effect litigation had on the ways segregationists defended their cause. Litigation success demands accepting the constraints imposed by the language and norms of acceptable legal argumentation. Litigation as an offensive tactic: when segregationists used the courts to lash out at the civil rights movement and to undermine civil rights activism. March 6, 2020: this form of offensive litigation was most commonly initiated by southern state or local authorities. Southerners filed libel suits against northern newspapers based on their coverage of the civil rights movement.
