May 12, 2012 · Attorney Katzenbach Was A Key Force For Civil Rights Former attorney general Nicholas Katzenbach played a major role in the nation's battle over civil rights and other pivotal moments in the 1960s ...
1. This case was argued with No. 515, Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States, decided this date, 379 U.S. 241, 85 S.Ct. 348, in which we upheld the constitutional validity of Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 against an attack no hotels, motels, and like establishments. This complaint for injunctive relief against appellants attacks the constitutionality of the Act as applied to a ...
it was for congress, as the branch that made this judgment, to assess and weigh the various conflicting considerations—the risk or pervasiveness of the discrimination in governmental services, the effectiveness of eliminating the state restriction on the right to vote as a means of dealing with the evil, the adequacy or availability of …
May 10, 2012 · As attorney general, besides helping to draft and steer civil rights legislation through Congress, Mr. Katzenbach defended the 1964 Civil Rights Act before the Supreme Court, winning a 9-0 ruling.
Katzenbach v. Morgan reaffirmed Congress’ power to enforce and extend equal protection guarantees. The case has served as a precedent in limited circumstances where Congress has taken action to remedy a state’s denial of equal protection. Katzenbach v. Morgan was influential in the passage of the 1968 Civil Rights Act. Congress was able to use its enforcement powers to take stronger actions against racial discrimination, including outlawing private housing discrimination.
Justice Harlan argued that the Court’s finding had disregarded the importance of the separation of powers. The legislative branch wields the power to make laws while the judiciary exercises judicial review over those laws to determine whether or not they are in line with fundamental rights laid out in the constitution. The Supreme Court’s ruling, Justice Harlan argued, had allowed Congress to act as a member of the judiciary. Congress created Section 4 (e) in order to remedy what it viewed as an Equal Protection Clause violation. The Supreme Court had not and did not find New York’s literacy test to be a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment, Justice Harlan wrote.
In 1965, the United States Congress passed the Voting Rights Act in an effort to end discriminatory practices that barred minority groups from voting. Section 4 (e) of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was targeted at the disenfranchisement occurring in New York. It read:
Elianna Spitzer is a legal studies writer and a former Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism research assistant. She has also worked at the Superior Court of San Francisco's ACCESS Center.
Congress acted within its powers under Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment, also known as the Enforcement Clause. Section 5 gives Congress “power to enforce, by appropriate legislation," the rest of the Fourteenth Amendment. Justice Brennan determined that Section 5 was a “positive grant” of legislative power. It enabled Congress to exercise its own discretion in determining what type of legislation is necessary to achieve Fourteenth Amendment protections.
His father was a corporate lawyer and New Jersey attorney general from 1924 to 1929. He died when Nicholas was 12. His mother was a member of the New Jersey State Board ...
Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach, second from right, confronting Gov. George C. Wallace at the University of Alabama in 1963. Credit... Nicholas deB. Katzenbach, who helped shape the political history of the 1960s, facing down segregationists, riding herd on historic civil rights legislation and helping to map Vietnam War strategy as ...
Nicholas deB. Katzenbach, who helped shape the political history of the 1960s, facing down segregationists, riding herd on historic civil rights legislation and helping to map Vietnam War strategy as a central player in both the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, died Tuesday night at his home in Skillman, N.J. He was 90.
As the No. 2 official at the State Department, Mr. Katzenbach defended the legality of United States involvement in Vietnam, appearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in August 1967 to argue that the Tonkin Gulf resolution, passed by Congress in 1964, had given the president the authority to widen the war.
On Capitol Hill, Mr. Katzenbach, a Democrat, cultivated the good will of Republican senators in 1964 to help pass the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which he also helped draft, ending a century of discrimination at the polls. In an interview with The New York Times for this obituary in 2006, he contrasted his even-tempered style with that of his predecessor, the often brutally straightforward Robert Kennedy. He said his own way was to be “less than direct.”
He had served in the Marine Corps, taught at several universities and, before joining the Pentagon in the Kennedy Administration, he was director of the defense studies program at Harvard. His successor there was Henry A. Kigsinger, the present Secretary of State.
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