The Courthouse as a Classroom

Six episodes

1. 1

   1942, and again in 1984

   Minoru Yasui breaks the curfew

   A young lawyer walks downtown after curfew on purpose, to make the government prove its order is legal. The judge agrees the curfew cannot bind a citizen — and then decides Yasui is not one. Forty-two years later the same building hears the case again.

   The Yasui case →
   For discussion

   1. Yasui chose to be arrested. What is the difference between breaking a law and testing one, and does the difference matter to how a court should treat you?
   2. The national ACLU declined to defend him. Why might a civil-liberties organization refuse a civil-liberties case in wartime? Was it wrong?
   3. Gus Solomon appeared alone, as a friend of the court, to argue the curfew was unconstitutional. So did Earl Warren, arguing the opposite. What does it tell you that the same man later wrote Brown v. Board of Education?
   4. In 1984 the conviction was vacated but the judge refused to rule on whether the government had acted in bad faith. Yasui called it a hollow victory. What would a full victory have looked like, and was it available?
2. 2

   1937

   The right to hold a meeting

   Oregon convicts a man for helping run a peaceful public meeting because the Communist Party sponsored it. A thirty-year-old Portland lawyer sees the case is not about communism at all, and reframes it around the freedom of assembly. The Supreme Court agrees unanimously.

   De Jonge v. Oregon →
   For discussion

   1. Solomon changed the question the court was being asked. How can the way a case is framed decide it before anyone argues?
   2. The Court held that peaceable assembly for lawful discussion cannot be made a crime — regardless of who called the meeting. Does that principle protect groups you disagree with? Should it?
   3. This case was decided in a state court, not this building. Why does the site tell you that, and what would be lost if it didn't?
3. 3

   1957–1960

   The silver platter

   A Portland racketeer is tried in this building on evidence that state police seized illegally. Federal law at the time allowed it, so long as no federal officer did the seizing — the evidence was handed over on a “silver platter.” The Supreme Court ends the practice.

   United States v. Elkins →
   For discussion

   1. The evidence against Elkins was real, and he was almost certainly guilty. Why would a court throw it out anyway? What is the exclusionary rule for?
   2. Under the old rule, the same search was illegal for one police force and usable by another. What does that do to the meaning of a constitutional right?
   3. Robert Kennedy testified at this trial and, by one account, performed badly. Does it change how you read the case to know who was in the room?
4. 4

   1969

   A fair share of the salmon

   Fourteen Yakama fishermen sue Oregon over its fishing regulations. Judge Belloni holds that the treaties of 1855 guarantee the tribes not merely equal access to the river but a fair share of what comes out of it. The case is still open more than fifty years later.

   Sohappy v. Smith →
   For discussion

   1. The Constitution calls treaties the supreme law of the land. What does it mean for a treaty signed in 1855 to bind a state regulation written in 1969?
   2. “Fair share” is not a number. Who should decide what it means — a judge, a legislature, the tribes, the state? Who did?
   3. This case has never closed; the court still supervises it. Is a lawsuit that lasts half a century a failure of the system or exactly what the system is for?
5. 5

   1991–1992

   The owl and the mill town

   Judge Helen Frye finds that the government ignored its own scientists' evidence about the northern spotted owl, and halts old-growth timber sales across western Oregon. Mill towns lose jobs; a forest is not cut; the politics of the Northwest are rearranged.

   Portland Audubon Society v. Lujan →
   For discussion

   1. Frye did not decide that owls matter more than jobs. She decided the agency had not followed its own law. What is the difference, and why do people so often collapse it?
   2. Should an unelected judge be able to stop an industry? What is the alternative, and who would it favor?
   3. The order came from this building. Walk to the seventh-floor courtroom in the Tour and imagine the room the day it was read. Who was there? Who wasn't, and should have been?
6. 6

   1933–1997

   Who gets in

   The building was designed to be imposing — twenty-four steps, bronze doors, an eagle. Inside it, over sixty-four years, the question of who was allowed to belong kept being answered differently: a Jewish judge nearly refused a seat in 1950; a Black court reporter nobody else would hire; the first woman prosecutor; the first Black marshal; thousands of new citizens sworn in upstairs.

   The People of the Building →
   For discussion

   1. Read the confirmation fight against Gus Solomon, and then his own record on pressing law firms to hire Jews, women, and Black lawyers. Did being kept out make him better at letting people in? Is that always how it works?
   2. The city directories name the elevator operator, the janitor, and the cigar-stand man. Why does a history usually leave those people out, and what changes when you put them back?
   3. Solomon turned a two-minute naturalization into a ceremony where every new citizen introduced themselves. What was he trying to teach, and to whom?