What Is The Supreme Court Case Of Loving V. Virginia?

Throughout the civil rights era, African Americans found themselves securing multiple legal victories, consisting of decisions ruling against racial segregation and discrimination. Led by Chief Justice Earl Warren during the Civil Rights Movement, the Supreme Court embodied the idea of legal liberalism, using the law to achieve political ends. During this era, the Court used the civil rights cases brought to them to achieve social change and promote equality. The decision in Loving v. Virginia is one example illustrating the Supreme Court using its power to attain racial equality and change and reform the American society, as striking down anti-miscegenation laws wiped out the last remaining Jim Crow laws. Loving v. Virginia proves to be a
Answering this question would involve the Court interpreting the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment, as there were ongoing debates concerning its function in anti-miscegenation laws. On April 10, 1967, oral arguments in the Supreme Court began for the case. Bernard Cohen and Philip Hirschkop, two young lawyers from the ACLU, represented the Lovings, while R. D. McIlwaine III represented the state of Virginia (Oral Arguments). Cohen and Hirschkop asserted that Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act was a slavery law, intended to keep blacks in their place. Furthermore, the lawyers maintained that the law aimed to keep blacks and whites distinct and separate, as a means of holding blacks in a lower position, both socially and economically (Oral Arguments). Additionally, the Lovings’ lawyers argued that the Racial Integrity Act violated both the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause as well as the Due Process Clause. Until this point, the case had generated debate involving the meaning of the Equal Protection Clause. Cohen emphasized that the purpose of the Equal Protection Clause was to eliminate racial discrimination deriving from state action (Oral Arguments). However, Virginia’s statues criminalized behavior based solely on people’s race, thus denying them equal
The first being that the Fourteenth Amendment had no effect on states’ power to enact anti-miscegenation laws, as such powers were excluded from the scope of the Fourteenth Amendment. Therefore, the Supreme Court had no power to infringe upon the power of the State (Oral Arguments). A key issue that arose throughout the case involved whether the Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment had intended for the amendment to make state miscegenation laws unconstitutional. McIlwaine argued that the Framers had not intended to affect states’ power over marriage. Thus, the Supreme Court could not read into the Constitution meaning that it did not have when it was adopted or expand the reach of the Constitution to include marriage which was purposely omitted by the Framers (Oral Arguments), invoking the idea of original intent in support of the constitutionality of the