Hernandez v. Texas
Encyclopedia
Hernandez v. Texas, 347 U.S. 475
Case citation
Case citation is the system used in many countries to identify the decisions in past court cases, either in special series of books called reporters or law reports, or in a 'neutral' form which will identify a decision wherever it was reported...

 (1954), was a landmark
Landmark decision
Landmark court decisions establish new precedents that establish a significant new legal principle or concept, or otherwise substantially change the interpretation of existing law...

 United States Supreme Court
Supreme Court of the United States
The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all state and federal courts, and original jurisdiction over a small range of cases...

 case that decided that Mexican American
Mexican American
Mexican Americans are Americans of Mexican descent. As of July 2009, Mexican Americans make up 10.3% of the United States' population with over 31,689,000 Americans listed as of Mexican ancestry. Mexican Americans comprise 66% of all Hispanics and Latinos in the United States...

s and all other racial groups in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 had equal protection under the 14th Amendment
Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was adopted on July 9, 1868, as one of the Reconstruction Amendments.Its Citizenship Clause provides a broad definition of citizenship that overruled the Dred Scott v...

 of the U.S. Constitution
United States Constitution
The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States of America. It is the framework for the organization of the United States government and for the relationship of the federal government with the states, citizens, and all people within the United States.The first three...

.

Background

Pedro Hernandez, a Mexican agricultural worker, was convicted for the murder of Joe Espinosa. Hernandez's legal team set out to demonstrate that the jury could not be impartial unless members of non-Caucasian
White people
White people is a term which usually refers to human beings characterized, at least in part, by the light pigmentation of their skin...

 races were allowed on the jury-selecting committees; no Mexican American had been on a jury for more than 25 years in the Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...

 county in which the case was tried. Hernandez and his lawyers appealed to the Texas Supreme court, and appealed again to the United States Supreme Court. The legal team included Gustavo C. Garcia
Gustavo C. Garcia
Gustavo "Gus" C. Garcia was a Mexican-American civil rights attorney.Garcia worked with fellow attorney Carlos Cadena in the landmark case Hernández v. Texas , arguing before the US Supreme Court for the end of a practice of systematic exclusion of Hispanics from jury service in Jackson County,...

, Carlos Cadena
Carlos Cadena
Carlos C. Cadena was a Mexican American lawyer, civil rights activist and judge based in San Antonio, Texas.Carlos Cristian Cadena, the son of Mexican immigrants, was born in San Antonio, Texas, in 1917 and attended Catholic school. He earned his LL.B...

, James deAnda
James DeAnda
James DeAnda was an American attorney and United States federal judge, noted for his activities in defense of Hispanic civil rights, particularly as a plaintiff's attorney in Hernandez v. Texas....

, Cris Aldrete, and John J. Herrera
John J. Herrera
John James Herrera was an American attorney, activist, and leader in the Mexican American civil rights movement....

.

Ruling

Chief Justice
Chief Justice of the United States
The Chief Justice of the United States is the head of the United States federal court system and the chief judge of the Supreme Court of the United States. The Chief Justice is one of nine Supreme Court justices; the other eight are the Associate Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States...

 Earl Warren
Earl Warren
Earl Warren was the 14th Chief Justice of the United States.He is known for the sweeping decisions of the Warren Court, which ended school segregation and transformed many areas of American law, especially regarding the rights of the accused, ending public-school-sponsored prayer, and requiring...

 and the rest of the Supreme Court unanimously ruled in favor of Hernandez, and required he be retried with a jury composed without regard to ethnicity. The Court held that the Fourteenth Amendment protects those beyond the racial classes of white
White people
White people is a term which usually refers to human beings characterized, at least in part, by the light pigmentation of their skin...

 or negro
Negro
The word Negro is used in the English-speaking world to refer to a person of black ancestry or appearance, whether of African descent or not...

, and extends to other racial groups, such as Mexican American in this case.

Social implications

The ruling was yet another step forward in the American Civil Rights Movement and another hit to racial segregation
Racial segregation
Racial segregation is the separation of humans into racial groups in daily life. It may apply to activities such as eating in a restaurant, drinking from a water fountain, using a public toilet, attending school, going to the movies, or in the rental or purchase of a home...

 in the USA. This time, racial minorities other than African American
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...

s benefited from such a ruling. The ultimate impact of this ruling was that now all racial groups of the United States were protected under the 14th Amendment.

The oral arguments of this case have been lost. However, the United States Supreme Court docket sheet and letter from Justice Clark to Chief Justice regarding joining opinion are available online.

External links

  • University of Texas School of Law archive on Hernandez case
  • American Experience
    American Experience
    American Experience is a television program airing on the Public Broadcasting Service Public television stations in the United States. The program airs documentaries, many of which have won awards, about important or interesting events and people in American history...

     episode - A Class Apart - From a small-town Texas murder emerged a landmark civil rights case. The little-known story of the Mexican American
    Mexican American
    Mexican Americans are Americans of Mexican descent. As of July 2009, Mexican Americans make up 10.3% of the United States' population with over 31,689,000 Americans listed as of Mexican ancestry. Mexican Americans comprise 66% of all Hispanics and Latinos in the United States...

     lawyers who took Hernandez v. Texas to the Supreme Court
    Supreme Court of the United States
    The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all state and federal courts, and original jurisdiction over a small range of cases...

    , challenging Jim Crow
    Jim Crow laws
    The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws in the United States enacted between 1876 and 1965. They mandated de jure racial segregation in all public facilities, with a supposedly "separate but equal" status for black Americans...

    -style discrimination. Aired on PBS
    Public Broadcasting Service
    The Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television network with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. Its headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia....

    on February 23, 2009.
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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