The Slaughterhouse Cases: Regulation, Reconstruction, And the Fourteenth Amendment

by Labbe, Ronald M.; Lurie, Jonathan

• ISBN13: 9780700614097
• ISBN10: 0700614095
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-10-13
• Publisher: Univ Pr of Kansas

Summary

"The rough-and-tumble world of nineteenth-century New Orleans was a sanitation nightmare, with the city's slaughterhouses dumping animal remains into local backwaters. When Louisiana authorized a monopoly slaughterhouse to bring about sanitation reform, hundreds of independent butchers sued, framing their cases as an infringement of rights protected by the recently passed Fourteenth Amendment. The surviving cases that reached the U.S. Supreme Court pitted the butchers' right to labor against the state's "police power" to regulate public health. The result in 1873 was a controversial 5-4 decision that for the first time addressed the meaning and import of the Fourteenth Amendment. While ruling that Louisiana had legitimately exercised its powers, the Court's majority went much further to declare that the amendment - and its "due process" and "equal protection" clauses - applied exclusively to the plight of former slaves and, thus, were unavailable to any other American."--BOOK JACKET.

Author Biography

Jonathan Lurie is professor of history and adjunct professor of law at Rutgers University. Ronald M. Labbe is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.

Table of Contents

Editors' Preface	xi
Preface and Acknowledgments	xv
Beef from the Pork Barrel? Introduction and Overview	1	(11)
Private Gain, Public Health, and Public Policy in Antebellum New Orleans	12	(13)
Law, Politics, and Slaughterhouse Reform	25	(18)
A Centralized Abattoir for New Orleans	43	(24)
The Order of Battle in the Lower Courts	67	(24)
Appeal, Repeal, and a Compromise	91	(22)
The Chase Court	113	(13)
The Arguments	126	(19)
Decision and Dissents	145	(19)
The Legacy	164	(15)
Chronology	179	(4)
Bibliographical Essay	183	(4)
Index	187