In Reckless Hands

May 26, 2008
The shocking story of the American eugenics movement has been told before, but Nourse's first book focuses on the Supreme Court case that dealt the movement its death blow: the 1942 decision in Skinner
v. Oklahoma.
Nourse conveys the popular acceptance of the idea of “race betterment” in the 1920s and '30s: in the permanent Eugenics Pavilion at the Kansas Free Fair, for instance, flashing lights toted up the cost to society of the criminal and the “feebleminded.” Against this background, Nourse, a law professor at the University of Wisconsin, conveys the magnitude of the constitutional challenge facing Jack Skinner, an Oklahoma convict ordered sterilized pursuant to a eugenic statute aimed at “habitual criminals.” Nourse is equally effective depicting the legal strategies and the impact of the Depression and the growing awareness of Nazi atrocities on the High Court. A bit more challenging is Nourse's analysis of Skinner's theoretical underpinnings. She argues convincingly that today, when genes are viewed as the “cause for everything from criminality to spirituality,” America's flirtation with eugenics is a cautionary tale worth remembering. 11 photos.

Starred review from July 1, 2008
Nourse blows the dust off one of the most momentous forgotten decisions in Supreme Court history, whose import for society is easily appreciated but whose rationale must be not just dusted off but salvaged and restored. Under the influence of the eugenics movements promises of an improved humanity, Oklahoma, like many other states, passed laws in the 1920s and 1930s authorizing the sexual sterilization of people of low intelligence, mental patients, and criminals.The first Oklahoma convict targeted for compulsory vasectomy, Jack Skinner becamethe plaintiff in a case that would effectually overturn legal sterilization in the U.S. From filing to Supreme Court decision took six years (193642) and, as Nourse demonstrates, involved state politics, classic underdog advocacy, riots and breakouts by frightened convicts, and FDRs attempt to pack the high court, but not any rights talk, even of the human right to reproduce. Back then, community interests and duly enacted laws generally trumped appeals to personal rights. Skinner v. Oklahoma was decided by arguments about the evenhandedness of Oklahomas convict-sterilization law. The justices concluded that the statute was discriminatory, not inhumane. Americans would do well to recall Skinners egalitarianism, Nourse says, as the persuasiveness of rights talk wanes. Completely engrossing, this may be the legal-history book of the year.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)