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Plessy V Ferguson Analysis

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In American history, there are many opinions of the supreme court that get a dissenting opinion. A dissenting opinion is an opinion that goes against the majority opinion of the court. One example of a dissenting opinion in the Supreme Court is the opinion of Justice John Marshall Harlan in the court case Plessy v. Ferguson.

“In the state of Louisiana in 1890, an act of the General Assembly states that there are separate railway carriages for the white and colored races” (“Google”), this meant that African American people had to ride separately from caucasian people. However, On June 7, 1892, a man named Homer Plessy went against this act and was arrested for sitting in an all white railcar in Louisiana. Plessy argued in court that his rights had been violated under the Fourth, 13th, and 14th amendments, which promised him equal treatment as a …show more content…
However, the Court failed to achieve a unanimous ruling” (“Looking Back”). The Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan did not agree with the majority opinion of the court, as he states in his dissenting opinion, “I am the opinion that the statute of Louisiana is inconsistent with the personal liberties of citizens, white and black, in that State, and hostile to both the spirit and the letter of the Constitution of the United States” (“Our Documents”). Harlan argues that if these laws are present in our nation, it will interfere with the freedom of the United States, and that it doesn’t make sense that we would put these restrictions on “a large body of American citizens, now constituting a part of the political community, called the people of the United States, for whom an by whom, through representatives, our government is administrated” (“Our Documents”). He follows this by arguing that these restrictive laws get in the way of the alienable laws that are given by the

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