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    Imbeciles: The Supreme Court, American Eugenics, and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck
    Unavailable
    Imbeciles: The Supreme Court, American Eugenics, and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck
    Unavailable
    Imbeciles: The Supreme Court, American Eugenics, and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck
    Audiobook13 hours

    Imbeciles: The Supreme Court, American Eugenics, and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck

    Written by Adam Cohen

    Narrated by Dan Woren

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    One of America's great miscarriages of justice, the Supreme Court's infamous 1927 Buck v. Bell ruling made government sterilization of "undesirable" citizens the law of the land

    In 1927, the Supreme Court handed down a ruling so disturbing, ignorant, and cruel that it stands as one of the great injustices in American history. In Imbeciles, bestselling author Adam Cohen exposes the court's decision to allow the sterilization of a young woman it wrongly thought to be "feebleminded" and to champion the mass eugenic sterilization of undesirable citizens for the greater good of the country. The 8-1 ruling was signed by some of the most revered figures in American law-including Chief Justice William Howard Taft, a former U.S. president; and Louis Brandeis, a progressive icon. Oliver Wendell Holmes, considered by many the greatest Supreme Court justice in history, wrote the majority opinion, including the court's famous declaration "Three generations of imbeciles are enough."

    Imbeciles is the shocking story of Buck v. Bell, a legal case that challenges our faith in American justice. A gripping courtroom drama, it pits a helpless young woman against powerful scientists, lawyers, and judges who believed that eugenic measures were necessary to save the nation from being "swamped with incompetence."  At the center was Carrie Buck, who was born into a poor family in Charlottesville, Virginia, and taken in by a foster family, until she became pregnant out of wedlock. She was then declared "feebleminded" and shipped off to the Colony for Epileptics and Feeble-Minded.

    Buck v. Bell unfolded against the backdrop of a nation in the thrall of eugenics, which many Americans thought would uplift the human race. Congress embraced this fervor, enacting the first laws designed to prevent immigration by Italians, Jews, and other groups charged with being genetically inferior. 

    Cohen shows how Buck arrived at the colony at just the wrong time, when influential scientists and politicians were looking for a "test case" to determine whether Virginia's new eugenic sterilization law could withstand a legal challenge. A cabal of powerful men lined up against her, and no one stood up for her-not even her lawyer, who, it is now clear, was in collusion with the men who wanted her sterilized.

    In the end, Buck's case was heard by the Supreme Court, the institution established by the founders to ensure that justice would prevail. The court could have seen through the false claim that Buck was a threat to the gene pool, or it could have found that forced sterilization was a violation of her rights. Instead, Holmes, a scion of several prominent Boston Brahmin families, who was raised to believe in the superiority of his own bloodlines, wrote a vicious, haunting decision upholding Buck's sterilization and imploring the nation to sterilize many more.
    Holmes got his wish, and before the madness ended some sixty to seventy thousand Americans were sterilized. Cohen overturns cherished myths and demolishes lauded figures in relentless pursuit of the truth. With the intellectual force of a legal brief and the passion of a front-page exposé, Imbeciles is an ardent indictment of our champions of justice and our optimistic faith in progress, as well as a triumph of American legal and social history.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateMar 1, 2016
    ISBN9780399565939
    Unavailable
    Imbeciles: The Supreme Court, American Eugenics, and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck

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    • 3/5
      Utterly horrifying and captivating. Author, Adam Cohen, digs deep to shed light on America's horrifying obsession with eugenics by outlining the supreme court case of Carrie Buck, a young girl who was declared "feeble-minded" and sterilized. At the turn of the twentieth century America's elite were infatuated with the idea of strengthening the American race by practicing eugenics on those undesirables that society wanted to get rid of: imbeciles, criminals, people with physical and mental defects, epileptics, sexually promiscuous women and more. Nazi Germany used America's eugenics rhetoric, research, and court cases as a model for their racial cleansing plan. By the time it was finally considered faux pas and barbaric, more than 70,000 American's had been sterilized, most without their consent or knowledge. Meticulously researched (although sometimes a little bogged down with details on key figures), this book is a scary piece of America's past and very timely as bigotry continues to rise again.
    • 4/5
      Excellent book, but read only if you are prepared to weep for humanity. Chilling. Infuriating. Was in tears by the end, and not the good kind of tears.
    • 4/5
      “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.” – Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.George Orwell and Stephen King could not join their talents to create a dystopian horror what would compare with the life of Carrie Buck. In Imbeciles: The Supreme Court, American Eugenics, and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck, Adam Cohen tells the nightmarish story of Carrie Buck as she was prepared to serve as the legal test case by the State of Virginia and America’s eugenics movement. The most frightening aspect Buck’s entire ordeal is that some of those held out as the greatest and most progressive minds of their day saw no danger in these waters. Hitler would use American eugenics as proof that social Darwinism was already making great strides, and Justice Holmes’ words were quoted at the Nuremberg trials – by the Nazi defense.
    • 4/5
      From a historical perspective, this is an excellent book. It extensively details the US Supreme Court case of Buck v. Bell. The book discusses a very, very shameful period in the United States and Europe. The only complaint I have about it is that I think the author includes a vast number of details about individuals, perhaps not all of which were necessary, and inclusion of which led to an authoritative piece longer than I think was needed to provide sufficient knowledge of the case.I was somewhat familiar with the concept of eugenics – i.e., selectively sterilizing, legally, certain people that the elites believed would be likely to pass on inferior genes/traits to their offspring. By doing so, the “science” of eugenics held that society would be improved overall, and eventually “cleansed” of the so-called feeble-minded, imbeciles, morons, idiots, and other undesirables. Unfortunately, there was no “science” that supported it. The “intelligence” tests used to determine who should be sterilized were not scientifically valid.This book covers the movement leading up to the US Supreme Court’s finding in Buck v. Bell that involuntary, legal sterilization of the “undesirables” under Virginia’s law could proceed. Many states had similar laws, leading to an estimated 60-70,000 involuntary, legal sterilizations nationwide from the early 20th century until the 1970s, many of which occurred without the sterilized individuals ever being informed of what was being done to them (many of which would never find out, or perhaps much later in life learn why they could not succeed at having children).It is astounding the names of individuals and institutions that come up as supporters of the concept of eugenics…Oliver Wendell Holmes (“Three generations of imbeciles is enough.”), former President William Howard Taft, Harlan Fiske Stone, Teddy Roosevelt, W. E. B. Dubois (“only fit blacks should procreate to eradicate the race's heritage of moral iniquity.”), J. H. Kellogg (yes that Kellogg), Margaret Sanger (founder of Planned Parenthood), Carnegie Institution, Rockefeller Foundation, and the U. S. Academic community (in 1928, there were 376 university courses that included eugenics in the curriculum), to name a few.In addition, the US eugenics movement was used by Nazi Germany as much of that country’s basis for their racial restriction laws and ultimate slaughter of millions (although at first Nazi Germany’s laws led to involuntary sterilization, the numbers of these done were minuscule compared to the exterminations carried out).Although one might think that the eugenics movement is dead and gone, the author properly points out that it simply lies below the surface of our culture and others around the world, not specifically resulting in involuntary sterilizations. Understanding of the human genome might lead society to consider “designer” children, gene splicing, gene replacement or other processes to “eliminate” undesirable traits in offspring. I think the author correctly does not argue the morality of such decisions or science, but he does imply that if not properly controlled, such knowledge might lead to involuntary selective processes in these areas.