In Reckless Hands

Memorable account of a landmark case that stymied the practice of forced sterilization.The original 1934 plaintiffs were three men jailed in Oklahoma's McAlester prison; each had at least three felony convictions, which made them eligible for sterilization under the state's broad 1933 law. Similar laws around the country drew their rationale from the pseudo-science of eugenics, which claimed that insanity, feeble-mindedness, promiscuity and criminality were inherited traits. Pseudonymous, frequently flawed family studies in the late 19th- and early-20th century had made names like Jukes and Kallikak synonyms for generations of imbeciles and criminals. Two crusading Oklahoma lawyers took the McAlester inmates' case and managed to delay implementation of the law as they lost appeal after appeal to higher courts - losses that occasioned prison riots and breakouts. At the 11th hour, two additional lawyers filed for consideration of Skinner v. Oklahoma by the U.S. Supreme Court. By that time, in late 1941, the court was headed by Harlan Stone and included Roosevelt appointees Felix Frankfurter, Hugo Black and William O. Douglas. The world was at war, and even the self-righteous who saw eugenics as the path to society's betterment were having second thoughts in light of Nazi atrocities. Douglas wrote in the deciding opinion on June 1, 1942, that in reckless hands, entire races or types might wither and disappear. Moreover, the law violated equal protection because it did not mandate sterilization for embezzlers or tax cheats (non-felons). Perhaps the most visionary language, however, came in the justice's reference to procreation as an area of human rights. In a nuanced discourse, Nourse (Criminal and Constitutional Law/Univ. of Wisconsin) recounts how legal thinking concerning race, liberty, constitutionality, equal protection and civil rights has changed dramatically since Skinner. However, she warns, society may once again be looking for the 'natural' secret to criminal tendencies, this time in the form of bad genes.A legal tale that reads like a cliffhanger. (Kirkus Reviews)