Justice Harlan's Lone Dissent Condemns Court's Betrayal

Justice John Marshall Harlan — a former slaveholder from Kentucky — delivered a passionate solo dissent in the Civil Rights Cases (1883), arguing that the Thirteenth Amendment gave Congress authority to abolish all 'badges and incidents of slavery' including private discrimination, and that the majority had left Black Americans 'practically at the mercy of corporations and individuals wielding power under the States.' Harlan's dissent became foundational to twentieth-century civil rights jurispr