Putting Buck v. Bell in Scientific and Historical Context: A Response to Victoria Nourse

Authors

Edward J. Larson

Document Type

Symposium

Abstract

In this article written for a law-review symposium in response to a presentation on the infamous 1927 U.S. Supreme Court opinion in Buck v. Bell, Edward J. Larson argues that, at the time that the case was decided, eugenics was on the incline, not the decline. In the 1920s, the American scientific and medical community broadly backed eugenic remedies for various forms of mental illness and retardation. Legislatures, lawyers, and jurists took their cue from this scientific and medical consensus. Absent any question that the statute at issue in Buck v. Bell was validly passed by the Virginia legislature or that due process was provided for the persons subject to its reach, the law should have withstood constitutional challenge. The tragedy of Buck v. Bell, Larson argues, was that Carrie Buck never received the due process guaranteed under Virginia’s eugenic sterilization statute and that neither her lawyers nor the courts protected her from a flagrant violation of her basic constitutional and statutory rights. Under the fact that should have been brought out at trial, Carrie Buck would not have been sterilized. More fundamentally, had due process been provided in this and other instances, while eugenics would still have been a scientific and medical mistake, it would not be a legal one.

Recommended Citation

Edward J. Larson Putting Buck v. Bell in Scientific and Historical Context: A Response to Victoria Nourse , 39 Pepp. L. Rev. Iss. 1 (2011)
Available at: https://digitalcommons.pepperdine.edu/plr/vol39/iss1/7