LANDMARK ‘HERNÁNDEZ V. TEXAS’
CASE REVISITED AT UH HALF CENTURY LATER
U.S. Supreme Court Ruling Established Civil Rights for Mexican Americans
HOUSTON, Nov. 16, 2004 – This marks the 50th anniversary
of a landmark Supreme Court case that established civil rights for
a mistreated minority group. The Hernández v. Texas case,
which confirmed the rights of Mexican Americans, will be explored
at a conference at the UH Law Center Friday, Nov. 19. And if you’re
thinking Brown v. Board of Education, you’re right. But this
is also the half-century mark for a lesser known but no less powerful
ruling -- Hernández v. Texas, which confirmed the rights
of Mexican Americans.
This milestone case, often overshadowed by the historic Brown ruling,
steps into the spotlight with a conference at the University of
Houston’s Law Center Friday, Nov. 19. “Hernández
v. Texas at Fifty” will offer an ambitious slate of civil
rights, social science and criminal law scholars who will explore
the circumstances surrounding this watershed case and the implications
that it held for other civil rights issues.
“This is the first case ever argued in the U.S. Supreme
Court by Mexican American lawyers, who prevailed despite long odds,”
said conference organizer Michael A. Olivas, William B. Bates Distinguished
Chair in Law at UHLC. “This conference will show just how
courageous and hardworking these lawyers were for their client and
the larger community. Even the Supreme Court, which unanimously
overturned the state jury trial and the Texas Supreme Court, was
impressed with their presentation. Their arguments were an assault
upon the longtime Texas treatment of Mexican Americans. However,
the case got swamped by the historic attention paid to Brown, and
so we decided to look at its importance in today’s setting.”
A keynote address will be delivered by U.S. District Judge James
De Anda, one of the original attorneys in the groundbreaking 1954
Hernández case. De Anda served as district judge from 1979-92
and is now in private practice.
Conference participants include Richard Delgado (University of
Pittsburgh), George Martinez (SMU), Ian Haney-Lopez (Boalt Hall),
Kevin Johnson (UC-Davis), Laura Gomez (UCLA), Juan Perea (Florida),
Steven Wilson (Prairie View A&M ), Thomas Russell (University
of Denver), Neil Foley (University of Texas), Clare Sheridan (University
of California, Berkeley), Sandra Guerra Thompson (University of
Houston) and Amilcar Shabazz (University of Alabama).
Presentations include: “Race and Colorblindness After Hernández
and Brown,” “Race through the Looking-Glass,”
“Still ‘White’ After All These Years: Mexican
Americans and the Politics of Racial Classification in the Federal
Judicial Bureaucracy, Twenty-Five Years After Hernández v.
Texas” and “The First Adoption of Standardized Testing
at the University of Texas.”
A detailed schedule of presentations can be found at http://www.law.uh.edu/Hernandez50/program.html.
The Hernández v. Texas case involved the prosecution of
a Mexican-American worker, Peter Hernández, on murder charges.
When the case was tried in Jackson County, no jurors of Mexican-American
descent were impaneled. Complaints and appeals against discriminatory
state jury selection and trial practices eventually made their way
to the country’s highest court. In an opinion published two
weeks before the Brown v. Board decision, the U.S. Supreme Court
held that for the purposes of applying Equal Protection, Mexican
Americans were a discrete group. The case became the basis for many
other civil rights precedents. Nevertheless, Hernández v.
Texas has not been given the standing it deserves, in large part
because it has been overshadowed by the more compelling Brown case.
The cases appear next to each other in the 1954 Supreme Court
Reporter.
The conference is sponsored by the UH Law Center, Arte Público
Press and several Houston-area organizations. Selected papers from
the conference along with materials from the original Hernandez
case will be edited for publication in the UCLA Chicano-Latino Law
Review and a subsequent Arte Público Press book to be titled
“COLORED MEN and HOMBRES AQUI – Hernandez v. Texas and
the Emergence of Mexican American Lawyering.”
There will be no charge for the conference, and students and scholars
are welcome to attend without charge for any of the events. (There
will, however, be a charge for attending the Friday night dinner.)
For more information about the conference, visit http://www.law.uh.edu/Hernandez50/.
For more information about the UH Law Center, visit http://www.law.uh.edu/.
For more information about Arte Público Press, visit http://www.arte.uh.edu/.
For more information about UH visit the universitys Newsroom at www.uh.edu/admin/media/newsroom.
|