Lessons in an unappealing law
Can a room full of Harvard professors and scholars from a range of disciplines find merit in the reasoning underlying a 1927 Supreme Court decision that upheld the forced sterilization of “mental defectives?” Harvard Law School (HLS) Professor Noah Feldman engaged a master class at the Mahindra Humanities Center Wednesday night in Socratic prodding to dig beneath the ruling’s objectionable findings. Feldman led art history professors, psychiatrists, law students, and humanities scholars through a thicket of conundrums to peel away their subjectivity in exchange for the rigor of appellate logic. The case was brought by Carrie Buck, a “feeble-minded woman” committed to Virginia’s state colony and sterilized under court orders. Buck was intelligent enough to write clear letters. Her mother, also deemed feeble-minded by authorities, had similar reading and writing abilities, and Buck’s 9-month-old child, who was deemed to be mentally unfit, went on to be an honor student. Carrie Buck (left), a...