the first part of the project is about the subject of "venture capital" and the second part is about ""into to us system law.

For better or worse, much of American legal education consists of the close reading of opinions from the appellate and supreme courts of the nation. It takes time, effort, and skill to read an opinion well. At the beginning, you may not know why you are reading an opinion. You may not know what information is relevant in the opinion and what information is less important. Finally, you may not know how to efficiently read a case and retain the most important information. Legal education generally, and this course specifically, will help you develop these skills.

In this excerpt there are editor-added parenthetical explanations of the important information that you will find in each part of a typical case. What you will read below is also edited; it is not the entire case. This will help you more efficiently read your other assigned cases. Comments are in brackets. Brackets in casebooks usually indicate matters that the textbook author has either added to the case or moved from its original location.

Supreme Court of the United States

Richard Perry LOVING et ux., Appellants,

v.

COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA.

No. 395.

Argued April 10, 1967. Decided June 12, 1967.

MR. CHIEF JUSTICE WARREN delivered the opinion of the Court.

[Each case begins with a caption, above, that lists identifying information. The caption contains information which helps set the context for the rest of the case. Don’t ignore it!

For example, you learn here that this opinion comes from the United States Supreme Court, that it was written by the then Chief Justice of that Court, Earl Warren, and that the decision was issued in June of 1967. Why does that matter? Between 1954 and 1980 the United States Supreme Court endeavored to eliminate inequalities based on race that had persisted in the United States since the time of slavery a century earlier. Chief Justice Earl Warren was a principal creator of that change. You also learn that this case was heard in April of 1967 and decided in June of 1967. The United States Supreme Court takes a long summer break starting in late June or early July. The Court often issues its most important and potentially controversial decisions shortly before it leaves for its “summer vacation.” In short, you learn from the caption that this is likely to be a very important opinion.

Also, you learn a great deal about the parties to the case. One of your first jobs as reader of a case is to figure out the heart of the legal conflict. Here, this case is a conflict between “Richard Perry Loving, et ux” and the “Commonwealth of Virginia.” What does “et ux” mean? It’s an abbreviation for “et uxor,” Latin for “and wife.” A much more common Latin phrase you will find in captions is “et al,” an abbreviation for “et alia,” which is Latin for “and others.” What is the “Commonwealth of Virginia?” A few states in the United States, particularly among the original thirteen states identify themselves with terms other than or in addition to “state.” From the perspective of the United States Constitution, however, they are all just “states.”

Finally, notice that the Lovings are listed first in the caption. If the case comes from the United States Supreme Court, as this one does, the parties listed before the “versus” – abbreviated “v.” – are usually the petitioners, which means that they lost in the court immediately below and sought Supreme Court review to correct that outcome. Here the Lovings are called “appellants,” not petitioners, for complex reasons of procedure irrelevant here.]

This case presents a constitutional question never addressed by this Court: whether a statutory scheme adopted by the State of Virginia to prevent marriages between persons solely on the basis of racial classifications violates the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment. [Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment provides:

"All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."]

For reasons which seem to us to reflect the central meaning of those constitutional commands, we conclude that these statutes cannot stand consistently with the Fourteenth Amendment.

[Most modern cases start with a statement of the issue the court must decide. Here there is a potential conflict between a group of Virginia state laws and two clauses of the United States Constitution, the Equal Protection Clause and the Due Process Clause, both located in the Fourteenth Amendment. You learn from the last sentence of the statement of the issue that the US Constitutional provisions render Virginia state statutes invalid as a result of that conflict. You will discover why that is the case when you read Marbury v. Madison and Martin v. Hunter’s Lessee later in this course.]

In June, 1958, two residents of Virginia, Mildred Jeter, a Negro woman, and Richard Loving, a white man, were married in the District of Columbia pursuant to its laws. Shortly after their marriage, the Lovings returned to Virginia and established their marital abode in Caroline County. At the October Term, 1958, of the Circuit Court of Caroline County, a grand jury issued an indictment charging the Lovings with violating Virginia's ban on interracial marriages. On January 6, 1959, the Lovings pleaded guilty to the charge, and were sentenced to one year in jail; however, the trial judge suspended the sentence for a period of 25 years on the condition that the Lovings leave the State and not return to Virginia together for 25 years. He stated in an opinion that:

"Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And, but for the interference with his arrangement, there would be no cause for such marriage. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix."

[Most opinions then contain a short statement of facts discussing the actual conflict between the parties. Here, the Lovings traveled from their home in Virginia to Washington, D.C. in order to get married, since interracial marriages were illegal in Virginia at that time. But the mere act of their returning to Virginia as an interracial couple was also illegal under Virginia law. Is such a law consistent with the United States Constitution? We know from the earlier statement of the issue that the answer is “no.”]

After their convictions, the Lovings took up residence in the District of Columbia. On November 6, 1963, they filed a motion in the state trial court to vacate the judgment and set aside the sentence on the ground that the statutes which they had violated were repugnant to the Fourteenth Amendment. . . . On January 22, 1965, the state trial judge denied the motion to vacate the sentences, and the Lovings perfected an appeal to the Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia. . . .

The Supreme Court of Appeals upheld the constitutionality of the anti-miscegenation statutes and, after modifying the sentence, affirmed the convictions. The Lovings appealed this decision, and we noted probable jurisdiction on December 12, 1966 . . .

[Opinions also regularly include a statement of the case or procedural history. This section describes the actions of the attorneys and judges in the case as it made its way to the United States Supreme Court. Here, the case originated in the Virginia state court system, but the United States Supreme Court accepted review of the case to determine whether the Virginia state laws conflict with the United States Constitution and thus cannot be enforced.]

. . . The Lovings were convicted of violating § 258 of the Virginia Code:

"Leaving State to evade law. -- If any white person and colored person shall go out of this State, for the purpose of being married, and with the intention of returning, and be married out of it, and afterwards return to and reside in it, cohabiting as man and wife, they shall be punished as provided in § 20-59, and the marriage shall be governed by the same law as if it had been solemnized in this State. The fact of their cohabitation here as man and wife shall be evidence of their marriage."

Virginia is now one of 16 States which prohibit and punish marriages on the basis of racial classifications. Penalties for miscegenation arose as an incident to slavery, and have been common in Virginia since the colonial period.

I

[Immediately above this comment, you will see the Roman numeral “I.” When courts begin a new topic, they often indicate a break by using a Roman numeral. The section below is part of the court’s reasoning that the Virginia statutes are unconstitutional.]

In upholding the constitutionality of these provisions in the decision below, the Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia referred to its 1955 decision in Naim v. Naim, 197 Va. 80, 87 S.E.2d 749, as stating the reasons supporting the validity of these laws. In Naim, the state court concluded that the State's legitimate purposes were "to preserve the racial integrity of its citizens," and to prevent "the corruption of blood," "a mongrel breed of citizens," and "the obliteration of racial pride," obviously an endorsement of the doctrine of White Supremacy. Id. at 90, 87 S.E.2d at 756. . . .

. . . [T]he State argues that the meaning of the Equal Protection Clause, as illuminated by the statements of the Framers, is only that state penal laws containing an interracial element as part of the definition of the offense must apply equally to whites and Negroes in the sense that members of each race are punished to the same degree. Thus, the State contends that, because its miscegenation statutes punish equally both the white and the Negro participants in an interracial marriage, these statutes, despite their reliance on racial classifications, do not constitute an invidious discrimination based upon race. The second argument advanced by the State assumes the validity of its equal application theory. The argument is that, if the Equal Protection Clause does not outlaw miscegenation statutes because of their reliance on racial classifications, the question of constitutionality would thus become whether there was any rational basis for a State to treat interracial marriages differently from other marriages. On this question, the State argues, the scientific evidence is substantially in doubt and, consequently, this Court should defer to the wisdom of the state legislature in adopting its policy of discouraging interracial marriages.

[Often the Court begins its reasoning with a short statement of the arguments that the parties have made, or perhaps the reasoning of a lower court that has already considered the issue. Here the State of Virginia makes a textual argument about the meaning of “equal” in the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. The state argues that the words of the Constitution favor its argument. Can you state in your own words the two arguments that the state makes in defending the constitutionality of the statute?]

Because we reject the notion that the mere "equal application" of a statute containing racial classifications is enough to remove the classifications from the Fourteenth Amendment's proscription of all invidious racial discriminations, we do not accept the State's contention that these statutes should be upheld if there is any possible basis for concluding that they serve a rational purpose. The mere fact of equal application does not mean that our analysis of these statutes should follow the approach we have taken in cases involving no racial discrimination. . . . In these cases, involving distinctions not drawn according to race, the Court has merely asked whether there is any rational foundation for the discriminations, and has deferred to the wisdom of the state legislatures. In the case at bar, however, we deal with statutes containing racial classifications, and the fact of equal application does not immunize the statute from the very heavy burden of justification which the Fourteenth Amendment has traditionally required of state statutes drawn according to race.

[According to the Court, in what situations does the Equal Protection Clause apply? When the state statute discriminates between different races? Or when the state statute classifies people by race, even if people of different races are equally affected? The paragraph above provides the answer.]

The State argues that statements in the Thirty-ninth Congress about the time of the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment indicate that the Framers did not intend the Amendment to make unconstitutional state miscegenation laws. Many of the statements alluded to by the State concern the debates over the Freedmen's Bureau Bill, which President Johnson vetoed, and the Civil Rights Act of 1866, 14 Stat. 27, enacted over his veto. While these statements have some relevance to the intention of Congress in submitting the Fourteenth Amendment, it must be understood that they pertained to the passage of specific statutes, and not to the broader, organic purpose of a constitutional amendment. As for the various statements directly concerning the Fourteenth Amendment, we have said in connection with a related problem that, although these historical sources "cast some light" they are not sufficient to resolve the problem;

"[a]t best, they are inconclusive. The most avid proponents of the post-War Amendments undoubtedly intended them to remove all legal distinctions among 'all persons born or naturalized in the United States.' Their opponents, just as certainly, were antagonistic to both the letter and the spirit of the Amendments, and wished them to have the most limited effect."

Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U. S. 483, 489 (1954). . . . We have rejected the proposition that the debates in the Thirty-ninth Congress or in the state legislatures which ratified the Fourteenth Amendment supported the theory advanced by the State, that the requirement of equal protection of the laws is satisfied by penal laws defining offenses based on racial classifications so long as white and Negro participants in the offense were similarly punished. McLaughlin v. Florida, 379 U. S. 184 (1964).

[In the paragraph above, the Court rejects the state’s historical argument. The state argues that the politicians who drafted the 14th Amendment did not intend it to legalize interracial marriage. Note that the Court often uses historical arguments to establish the original understanding of a law, when the text of that law is ambiguous.]

The State finds support for its "equal application" theory in the decision of the Court in Pace v. Alabama, 106 U. S. 583 (1883). In that case, the Court upheld a conviction under an Alabama statute forbidding adultery or fornication between a white person and a Negro which imposed a greater penalty than that of a statute proscribing similar conduct by members of the same race. The Court reasoned that the statute could not be said to discriminate against Negroes because the punishment for each participant in the offense was the same. However, as recently as the 1964 Term, in rejecting the reasoning of that case, we stated "Pace represents a limited view of the Equal Protection Clause which has not withstood analysis in the subsequent decisions of this Court." McLaughlin v. Florida, supra, at 379 U. S. 188. As we there demonstrated, the Equal Protection Clause requires the consideration of whether the classifications drawn by any statute constitute an arbitrary and invidious discrimination. The clear and central purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment was to eliminate all official state sources of invidious racial discrimination in the States. . . .

[Finally the State makes an argument based on precedent, by analogizing to the prior case of Pace v. Alabama. According to the Court, was Pace correctly decided? If not, then what is the correct rule? When will the Court declare that a state statute violates the Equal Protection Clause and thus is invalid? Can you find a phrase or sentence in the paragraph above that would help?]

There can be no question but that Virginia's miscegenation statutes rest solely upon distinctions drawn according to race. The statutes proscribe generally accepted conduct if engaged in by members of different races. . . . At the very least, the Equal Protection Clause demands that racial classifications, especially suspect in criminal statutes, be subjected to the "most rigid scrutiny," Korematsu v. United States, 323 U. S. 214, 216 (1944), and, if they are ever to be upheld, they must be shown to be necessary to the accomplishment of some permissible state objective, independent of the racial discrimination which it was the object of the Fourteenth Amendment to eliminate. . . .

[Courts often announce a rule or rules, which it intends to apply both to the case before it and to future cases. The paragraph above contains a rule. Can you state in your own words the rule and in what circumstances we apply that rule?]

[Finally, courts often include an application of the rule to the facts of the case. The paragraph above is a short application of the rules that emerge from the reasoning of Part I of the opinion. Note also the Roman numeral II immediately below. This new section introduces a new subject, the Due Process Clause of the United States Constitution.]

II

These statutes also deprive the Lovings of liberty without due process of law in violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.

Marriage is one of the "basic civil rights of man," fundamental to our very existence and survival. . . . To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discriminations. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual, and cannot be infringed by the State.

These convictions must be reversed.

It is so ordered.

MR. JUSTICE STEWART, concurring.