Tagged: President Andrew Johnson

“More expansively, the Freedman’s Bureau Act of March 3, 1865, pursuant to the Southern land confiscation acts of 1861, 1862, 1863, and 1864, had an explicit racial land redistribution provision. Again, ‘not more than 40 acres’ of land was to be provided to refugee or freedman male citizens at three years’ annual rent not exceeding 6 percent of the value of the land based on appraisal of the state tax authorities in 1860. At the end of the three years, the occupants could purchase the land and receive title. Similar provisions were included in the postwar Southern Homestead Act of 1866; freedmen were to receive land in the southern states at a price of $5 for 80 acres. Neither of these Acts were implemented on behalf of the ex-slaves with any degree of vigor given the fierce opposition of President Andrew Johnson. By the end of 1865, Johnson also had ordered the removal of former slaves from the coastal lands they had settled under the conditions of Sherman’s Special Field Orders No. 15. The lands ultimately were restored to the former slave owners.”

Source: William Darity, Jr. Forty Acres and a Mule in the 21st Century. Social Science Quarterly, Volume 89, No. 3, September 2008.

“As early as 1806, the Supreme Court in Wise v. Withers, [7 U.S. (3 Cranch) 331 (1806)] had recognized a right to sue a judge for exercising authority beyond the jurisdiction authorized by statute. In 1869, one year after passage of the Fourteenth Amendment and long before due process had assumed its modern contours, the Supreme Court made its first effort to define the limits imposed on state judges. The Court held that state judges possessing general powers were not liable ‘unless perhaps when the acts … are done maliciously or corruptly.’ Then in 1872, one year after the civil rights laws were passed, the Supreme Court overruled its earlier dictum and announced that judges would not be liable even for malicious or corrupt acts.”

Not surprising that the majority all-white Court changed its mind on judicial immunity a year after the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 was passed….

The article also goes on to state:

One fact is clear about the 1866 Act: it unquestionably had abolished judicial immunity from criminal prosecution, in effect overruling the precedent in Floyd. Partly because of this feature, President Andrew Johnson had vetoed the bill, and Congress promptly had overridden the veto amid indignant cries about the tyranny of local Southern officials. During the vote to override, one representative had sharply responded to the President’s concern:

I answer it is better to invade the judicial power of the States than permit it to invade, strike down, and destroy the civil rights of citizens. A judicial power perverted to such uses should be speedily invaded. … And if an officer shall intentionally deprive a citizen of a right, knowing him to be entitled to it, then he is guilty of a willful wrong which deserves punishment.

Others declaimed that immunity for any state official must be abolished because immunity “is the very doctrine out of which the rebellion was hatched.”

Source: Robert Craig Waters, “Judicial Immunity v. Due Process: When Should A Judge Be Subject To A Suit?” Cato Journal, Vol.7, No.2 (Fall 1987). pg. 466-467.