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2plus2equals.bsky.social
@2plus2equals.bsky.social
If 2. is small and is just rounded up, 2. + 2. can equal 3. For large values rounded down, it can be 5. It can never be 6.

I read historical documents a small chunk a day to understand them. That’s all this feed is.
Toonen/1

juris.ohchr.org/casedetails/...

Decision is here. I think the jumble at the top is covenant on civil and political rights (CCPR), communication (C), Session # (50), Decision (D), tracking number (488), year (1992).

Toonen submitted the complaint in 1991, it was taken for review in 1992.
Jurisprudence Database
juris.ohchr.org
June 5, 2025 at 6:41 AM
The next document isn’t that old, all of 1994, but it’s a relevant discussion for Pride - the Toonen decision.

This landmark case in the United Nations Human Rights Commission found that sexual orientation was a protected status under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
June 4, 2025 at 4:42 AM
31/Fred

The final dissent comes from Justice Jackson. Not the current one, obviously, but Robert H. Jackson, later noted for his work in the Nuremberg trials, and the last SCOTUS justice who did not go to law school, instead being apprenticed (“reading law”) like Kim Kardashian.
May 29, 2025 at 5:37 AM
21/Fred

In section 20 the court flat out denies that it is ruling on the internment of a citizen based solely on ancestry - claimed as a “clear” ruling without actually specifying which ruling.

It does say that because we were at war with Japan it was justified to act solely on ancestry.
May 19, 2025 at 5:23 AM
11/Fred

The ruling compares the case of Korematsu with the Hirabayashi ruling the previous year where court held that a curfew based solely on ancestry was justified when at war with the country of ancestry, though apparently only when it was Japan.

supreme.justia.com/cases/federa...
Hirabayashi v. United States, 320 U.S. 81 (1943)
Hirabayashi v. United States
supreme.justia.com
May 9, 2025 at 3:33 AM
1/Fred

The oral arguments for Korematsu’s SCOTUS trial took place on October 11-12, 1944. In the context of the Pacific war this was island hopping, mid-Peleliu. In Europe this is 4 months after D-Day.

Korematsu was convicted 8Sep1942, appealed and upheld 7Jan1944, granted certiorari 27Mar1944.
April 29, 2025 at 5:18 AM
I’m going to try this as a string of replies rather than as a new post each day for reading simplicity.

The next document will be the decision in the 1944 SCOTUS case of Fred Korematsu.

The specifics of the case were overturned in 1983 and the ruling in 2018.

www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt...
TOYOSABURO KOREMATSU v. UNITED STATES.
www.law.cornell.edu
April 28, 2025 at 6:32 AM
62/What

FD closes the speech with a poem by William Lloyd Garrison which references the command in Leviticus 25 for a “reset” year where all debt is forgiven, slaves released, etc… which, well, has not happened in a long time as described biblically.

commongood.cc/reader/god-s...
God Speed The Year of Jubilee by William Lloyd Garrison
William Lloyd Garrison (December 10, 1805 – May 24, 1879), who signed and printed his name Wm. Lloyd Garrison, was a prominent American abolitionist, journalist, suffragist, and social reformer. He is...
commongood.cc
April 26, 2025 at 5:38 PM
61/What

Well, that’s disconcerting. The site I’ve been reading from, the Frederick Douglass Papers project, is… unresponsive. Maybe just a temporary thing, but the virtual equivalent of book burning is very much in vogue at the moment and I would not be shocked to find the site is gone.
April 26, 2025 at 4:31 AM
60/What

FD expresses optimism that the free flow of goods and information and the world being functionally a smaller place will help end localized offenses maintained by tradition.

The mid-19th century saw a general wave of abolition and the US was on the back half of it but part of that trend.
April 25, 2025 at 4:30 AM
59/What

Explicitly in spite of the gloom of his arguments, FD states that he has hope.

He quotes from Isaiah 59:1 that the “arm of the LORD is not shortened” likely with the assumption that his audience is familiar with the passage, a promise of justice and salvation.

biblehub.com/niv/isaiah/5...
Isaiah 59 NIV
biblehub.com
April 24, 2025 at 3:57 AM
58/What

FD challenges his audience to find a single pro-slavery clause in the Constitution while also claiming that the Constitution contains many ideas “entirely hostile” to slavery.

He states that he’ll return to that topic which happened in 1860:

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Con...
The Constitution of the United States: is it pro-slavery or anti-slavery? - Wikipedia
en.m.wikipedia.org
April 23, 2025 at 4:23 AM
57/What

FD argues that everyone has right to form their own opinion of what the Constitution means and, by all “honorable” methods, to make that interpretation the prevailing one.

Obviously easier for a justice on SCOTUS, but everyone being allowed to advocate their own ideas is easy to defend.
April 22, 2025 at 6:14 AM
56/What

FD argues that the Constitution is a “GLORIOUS LIBERTY DOCUMENT” as it ought to be interpreted, not as the pro-slavery document that the North allows and accepts.

He argues that slavery isn’t in it. Article I section 9 addresses the international slave trade without the specific word.
a cartoon of a man sitting at a desk with the words you are technically correct the best kind of correct
Alt: a cartoon of a man sitting at a desk with the words you are technically correct the best kind of correct
media.tenor.com
April 21, 2025 at 12:06 AM
55/What

The last, but explicitly not least, of FD’s constitutional scholars is Ger(r)it(t) Smith - apparently people weren’t very consistent in spelling his name.

Liberty Party, Free Soil Party, Congressman, Member of John Brown’s Secret Six.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrit_...
Gerrit Smith - Wikipedia
en.m.wikipedia.org
April 20, 2025 at 5:40 AM
54/What

Samuel E. Sewall is the next mentioned - the E is important, his 18th century forebear Samuel Sewall is arguably more notable as he was involved in the Salem Witch trials and wrote an anti-slavery pamphlet in 1700.

Like many in this context he worked on women’s rights as well as abolition.
April 19, 2025 at 6:02 AM
53/What

William Goodell is the next constitutional scholar FD mentions. I’m not seeing on a quick search which piece FD might specifically discuss. Goodell was a founder of the abolitionist Liberty Party, which at peak held one seat in each house of Congress.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/William...
William Goodell (abolitionist) - Wikipedia
en.m.wikipedia.org
April 18, 2025 at 3:33 AM
52/What

Rather than dwell at length on the question of the Constitution, FD mentions several others who had already done so.

Lysander Spooner is better known for his later anarchist works, FD is likely referring to his 1845 argument of slavery being unconstitutional.

archive.org/details/DKC1...
The Unconstitutionality of Slavery : Lysander Spooner : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
Lysander Spooner uses legal interpretation and the rule of natural law to argue that slavery is not specifically permitted by the Constitution of the United...
archive.org
April 17, 2025 at 4:41 AM
51/What

FD’s next section is on the Constitution and acknowledges that it’s contradictory.

He quotes Macbeth’s accusations against those who had led him astray and compares that to the Constitution - that the framers were dishonest in allowing slavery, in contrast to FD’s previous praise of them.
April 16, 2025 at 4:21 AM
50/What

FD talks about slavery as a venomous serpent nursing at the breast of America.

He argues that it destroys the “moral power” of the nation abroad, a by-word for mockery.

We attempted to paper over it in the 1960’s?

www.powells.com/book/cold-wa...
Cold War Civil Rights: Mary L. Dudziak: Trade Paperback: 9780691152431: Powell's Books
www.powells.com
April 15, 2025 at 4:43 AM
49/What

The second hypocrisy is the Declaration of Independence’s “hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal; and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; and that, among these are, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

All men except slaves.
April 14, 2025 at 5:36 AM
48/What

FD points out some specific hypocrisies, starting with Acts 17:26 (God made all nations and people) - FD continues with a command to love, not hate, others which is not Acts 17:27 (all nations praise God). It is an easily found Biblical sentiment, though not in FD’s exact phrasing.
April 13, 2025 at 4:54 AM
47/What

Honestly the next bit is depressingly modern - FD castigated America for the hypocrisy of “republican religion” that criticized monarchs in Russia and Austria but protected tyrants in Virginia and Carolina.

“Fallen Hungary” is mentioned, likely this:

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungari...
Hungarian Revolution of 1848 - Wikipedia
en.m.wikipedia.org
April 12, 2025 at 3:57 AM
46/What

FD lists off six names, of which only Wilberforce is one I already recognized. The first, Sharp, is credited by some as the start of the abolitionist movement in England which had abolished slavery almost two decades before FD’s speech.

historicengland.org.uk/research/inc...
Timeline of The Slave Trade and Abolition | Historic England
Timeline of key events in the history of the trade in enslaved Africans.
historicengland.org.uk
April 12, 2025 at 3:49 AM
45/What

FD goes on to compare the Christianity he saw in England and the Christianity he saw in America. He had traveled in the British Isles from 1845-7, first arriving in Ireland where he was amazed at the lack of racism but also at the grim poverty.

He arrived in the first year of the famine.
April 10, 2025 at 2:52 AM