From Dred Scott to Barack Obama: The Ebb and Flow of Race Jurisprudence
By Charles J. Ogletree, Jr
The Harvard Law School Blackletter Law Journal, affectionately known as BLJ, celebrates its 25th anniversary this year. The BLJ has much to celebrate. During its life span, Harvard Law School and the country as a whole have made great strides in advancing civil rights and racial equality. During this past monumental year alone, Barack Obama, a Harvard Law School graduate and the first African American President of the prestigious Harvard Law Review, became the 44th President of the
United States and the first African American to be elected to the nation’s highest office. President Obama has appointed Eric Holder as the first African American Attorney General of the United States, as well as Elena Kagan, the first woman to serve as Dean of Harvard Law School, as the first female Solicitor General of the United States. BLJ has been an important part of this national transformation.
Yet, for all of the progress achieved, I am not persuaded that, as some have argued, we have entered into a “post-racial” America. Rather, in this foreword, written in honor of BLS’s 25th anniversary, I hope to illustrate how, over the last 150 years, progress in advancing racial equality in the United States has ebbed and flowed. All too often, significant forward motion is followed by a dramatic backward lurch. This pattern is particularly evident when examining major legal decisions pertaining to race
rendered by the Supreme Court since the Dred Scott decision of 1857. Each decision, along with related developments and events that shaped our nation’s discourse and attitudes about race, provides us with a foundation upon which to develop a strategy for addressing racial diversity and jurisprudence in the future.
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