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CONSTITUTIONAL
RIGHTS FOUNDATION
Bill of Rights in Action Fall/Winter
1991 (8:1) Trends and Issues of the Bill of Rights This issue of Bill or Rights in Action concludes our series commemorating the bicentennial of the Bill of Rights. Its articles contain an historical and contemporary focus on the trends and issues of the Bill of Rights. U.S. Government: The New Supreme Court: Decision to Come U.S. History: Who Voted in Early America World Affairs: On the Road To Revolution With Boris Yeltsin World History: The Tax Farmer of Mari The New Supreme Court: Decisions to Come The Supreme Court brought about a revolution in the law during the 1950s and 1960s. Decisions by justices in this era ended legal racial segregation and expanded the rights of individuals including minorities, women, and defendants in criminal trials. During the 1970s an 1980s, Republican presidents gradually replaced justices from this era as they retired. Today, the high court led by Chief Justice William Rehnquist is largely made up of justices with a different judicial philosophy and view of the law. While it is difficult to generalize, the current justices are less likely to interpret the Constitution to expand individual rights. Instead, they are more likely to find the acts of government, either the executive or legislative branch, to he constitutional. This article reviews important Supreme Court precedents in four areas: prayers in public schools, abortion, the exclusionary rule, and affirmative action. All of these constitutional areas are ripe for reconsideration by the new justices. Following a discussion of precedents in each area, a general constitutional question is then presented to form the basis for a moot Supreme Court hearing to be conducted by the class. The Establishment Clause and Prayers in Public Schools The First and 14th amendments prohibit Congress and the states from passing any law "respecting an establishment of religion." The Supreme Court's first important interpretation of this establishment clause took place in 1947. Writing for the majority, Justice Hugo Black used Thomas Jefferson's argument for a "wall of separation between church and state" as the basis for his interpretation of the establishment clause. "Neither a state nor the federal government can set up a church," he wrote. "Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions or prefer one religion over another. . . ." (Everson v. Board of Education , 330 U.S. 1, 1947) Starting in the 1960s, the Supreme Court ruled that prayers and other religious exercises in the public schools violated the establishment clause of the First Amendment. The Supreme Court held in 1962 that a voluntary "non-sectarian" school prayer, written by state officials in New York, was unconstitutional. (Engle v. Vitale, 370 U.S. 421, 1962) The following year, the high court similarly ruled that the voluntary recitation of the Lord's Prayer and readings from the Bible in Pennsylvania's public schools violated the establishment clause. (Abington Township School District v. Schempp, 374 U.S. 203, 1963) In 1985, Justice Rehnquist wrote a dissenting opinion in the case of Wallace v. Jaffree [472 U.S. 38], which struck down an Alabama law requiring one minute of silence before school to allow "meditation or voluntary prayer." In that dissent, he challenged the rationale for the court's previous school prayer cases. Justice Rehnquist argued that the framers of the First Amendment only intended the establishment clause to prohibit the government from establishing a national religion or preferring one religion over another. He also reasoned that the court had been in error in adopting Jefferson's rigid "wall of separation between church and state" idea as a basis for making decisions about the establishment clause. Based on these arguments, Justice Rehnquist concluded that the establishment clause does not automatically prohibit prayers in public-school classrooms. The court demonstrated that it was not persuaded by Rehnquist's views in the 1992 case of Lee v. Weisman [505 U.S. 577]. In a 5-4 decision, the court ruled that the establishment clause forbids clergy from offering prayers as part of a public school graduation ceremony. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy delivered the opinion of the court, writing that "the government involvement with religious activity in this case is pervasive, to the point of creating a state sponsored and state directed religious exercise in a public school." In such a case, Kennedy continued, "the controlling precedents . . . compel the holding here that the policy [of allowing clergy to offer prayers at public school graduations] is an unconstitutional one." Justice Rehnquist joined in Justice Antonin Scalia's dissent, which argued that non-sectarian benedictions safeguard against religious bigotry. Scalia concluded that "to deprive our society of that important [safeguard], in order to spare the nonbeliever what seems to me the minimal inconvenience of standing or even sitting in respectful nonparticipation, is as senseless in policy as it is unsupported in law." In 2000, the Supreme Court decided the case of Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe in the spirit of Lee v. Weisman. In Santa Fe v. Doe, the court ruled that permitting student-led and -initiated prayer at public school football games violates the establishment clause. Delivering the opinion of the Court, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote that the school district's policy is constitutionally invalid because it "unquestionably has the purpose and creates the perception of encouraging the delivery of prayer at a series of important school events." In a dissenting opinion, Justice Rehnquist wrote that "the Court distorts existing precedent to conclude that the school district's student-message program is invalid on its face under the Establishment Clause. But even more disturbing than its holding is the tone of the Court's opinion; it bristles with hostility to all things religious in public life." While the court has ruled fairly consistently that prayer in public schools is a violation of the Establishment Clause, the precise limits of this injunction are yet to be fixed. Constitutional Question #1 Do graduation prayers and other religious exercises in the public schools violate the establishment clause of the First Amendment? The Right to Privacy and Abortion A 7-2 majority of the Supreme Court in 1973 held unconstitutional a Texas law that prohibited all abortions except those necessary to save the life of the mother. (Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 438, 1973). This decision struck down many state laws forbidding abortion and set off a storm of controversy throughout the nation that continues to this day. The Supreme Court in the Roe case based its ruling on a woman's right to privacy. Although the Constitution nowhere specifically mentions such a right, the court found it implied in the First, Third, Fourth, and Ninth amendments and in the due-process clause of the 14th Amendment. (Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479, 1965). The court ruled that this right of privacy protected a woman's right to abortion. Justice Harry A. Blackmun, writing for the majority, found that states did have an interest in the unborn fetus and could legally prohibit an abortion, but only after the fetus was "viable" (i.e., capable of life outside the womb—about 24 weeks after conception). Before that time, a pregnant woman has the right to have an abortion. The Supreme Court's decision was quickly attacked on legal grounds. Some questioned the existence of a privacy right in the Constitution. According to this view, since none of the amendments specifically mention privacy, the court overstepped its bounds by implying such a right. Some who agreed that a right to privacy exists questioned whether it should protect the right to abortion. It was also argued that the Supreme Court justices had substituted their own views about abortion for the views of the elected representatives of the people. For a while, the Supreme Court decided cases that expanded the Roe V. Wade decision. In 1976, a 6-3 court majority held that a state may not require a married woman to get her husband's consent before obtaining an abortion. (Planned Parenthood of Central Missouri v. Danforth, 428 U.S. 52, 1976) But by the end of the decade, the high court began to make exceptions to the Roe v. Wade ruling. In 1979, the court agreed that states, under certain conditions, may require an unmarried, pregnant minor to get parental consent before having an abortion. (Bellotti v. Baird, 443 U.S. 622, 1979) So far, the most far-reaching Supreme Court decision restricting Roe v. Wade was a ruling in 1989 that opened the door to states to write stricter laws regulating abortion. (Webster v. Reproductive Health Services, 109 S.Ct. 3040, 1989) In a 5-4 decision, the court majority upheld a Missouri law banning all tax-supported health-care facilities from providing abortions not needed to save the life of the mother. During the 1990s, the Supreme Court continued to decide cases that created exceptions to Roe v. Wade. In the 1990 case of Hodgson v. Minnesota [497 U.S. 417], the Supreme Court upheld a Minnesota law requiring a minor to wait 48-hours after the notification of her parents before receiving an abortion, unless the minor is a victim of parental abuse or neglect. The Supreme Court also upheld an Ohio statute requiring physicians to notify at least one parent of an unmarried, unemancipated minor receiving an abortion [Ohio v. Akron Center, 497 U.S. 502, 1990]. In the 1991 case of Rust v. Sullivan [500 U.S. 173], the court upheld a federal law prohibiting the allocation of federal funds to programs providing abortion counseling or abortion as "a method of family planning." One of the most recent case the court has decided about abortion and the right to privacy is the 2000 case of Stenberg v. Carhart. In this case, the court examined a Nebraska statute that renders partial birth abortion a felony. The statute defines partial birth abortion as a procedure in which a doctor "partially delivers vaginally a living unborn child before killing the . . . child." The Supreme Court ruled that "Nebraska's statute criminalizing the performance of partial birth abortion[s] violates the Federal Constitution." It is too soon to tell whether this case will be the first of a new wave of cases expanding the Roe v. Wade decision. Constitutional Question #2 Does the Constitution guarantee a right to privacy? If so, does the right protect a woman's right to abortion? Due Process of Law and the Exclusionary Rule The exclusionary rule is actually a set of court-developed rules barring from criminal trials all evidence illegally seized by the police. The exclusionary rule serves as a mechanism to keep police from violating rights guaranteed by the amendments to the Constitution. These rights include the Fourth Amendment search and seizure requirements, the Fifth Amendment's protection against self-incrimination, and the Sixth Amendment's right to counsel. In 1918, the Supreme Court applied the exclusionary rule to all federal criminal cases. (Weeks v. U.S., 232 U.S. 383, 1914) In 1961, the high court ruled that the exclusionary rule extended to state courts where most of the nation's criminal cases are tried. (Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 1961) This ruling was criticized by many who objected that reliable evidence would no longer be admissible in trials when a defendant could show that his or her constitutional rights had been violated. As a result, guilty persons would sometimes go free. In addition, it was argued that by imposing these restrictions on law enforcement and prosecutors they would be hampered in efforts to combat crime. Over time, the Supreme Court has carved out exceptions to the exclusionary rule. Under these exceptions, evidence may be admitted into court under certain conditions even though the constitutional rights of defendants have been breached. One of these exceptions has to do with "impeachment" of a defendant's testimony. In this situation, the prosecutor may not use illegally obtained physical evidence or statements in presenting the primary case. But the prosecutor may introduce this evidence to show that the defendant's own court testimony is untruthful. (Harris v. New York , 401 U.S. 222, 1971, and Michigan v. Harvey, 110 S.Ct. 1176, 1990). The 1990 case of James v. Illinois, however, the justices decided 5-4 that illegally obtained evidence may be used in court to impeach testimony of the defendant only. It may not be used to impeach the testimony of other witnesses. [110 S.Ct 648] The Supreme Court frequently has been guided by the principle that the purpose of the exclusionary rule is to deter authorities from illegally obtaining evidence by removing the incentive of using such evidence for prosecution. In the 1995 case of Arizona v. Evans [514 U.S. 1], the court ruled that the exclusionary rule does not require the suppression of evidence seized in violation of the Fourth Amendment if the evidence was seized in accordance with erroneous information resulting from clerical errors of court employees. It remains to be seen what the justices of the Supreme Court will ultimately decide about the exclusionary rule. It may be that they will continue to tinker with it, finding a new exception in one case, sustaining it in another. Debates about the exclusionary rule are likely to remain on of the court's most hotly debated issues. Constitutional Question #3 Should all statements made by defendants to police illegally obtained or not be admitted into evidence? Equality and Affirmative Action "Affirmative action" refers to a wide variety of measures to aid certain groups, such as African-Americans, Latinos, and women. The purpose of affirmative action is to enable these groups to overcome the harmful effects of past and present discrimination. The first significant Supreme Court decision in this area took place in 1978 when a white graduate student challenged the affirmative-action program of the University of California at Davis medical school. The Davis medical school had reserved a quota of 16 out of 100 places in its entering class for minority applicants. Allan Bakke, a white applicant, was refused admission to the school even though his entrance test scores were higher than some minority applicants who were accepted. Justice Lewis Powell, writing for a 5-4 majority, ruled that Bakke had been discriminated against in violation of the equal-protection clause of the 14th Amendment (Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265, 1978). The following year the Supreme Court reached a surprisingly different conclusion in the case of an affirmative-action job-training program jointly developed by the Kaiser Steel Company and the steelworker's union. Before the affirmative-action program, less than 2 percent of the 273 skilled craft workers at the Kaiser plant in Gramercy, Louisiana, were black, even though blacks made up 39 percent of the area's labor force. Under training-program rules, workers were to be selected based on seniority. But at least 50 percent of the trainees had to he black. Brian Weber, a white Kaiser steelworker, charged that he was the victim of "reverse discrimination" when he was denied entrance into the program, because some black workers with less seniority were selected into the program He claimed this violated the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Congress passed this act at the height of the civil-rights movement to eliminate racial discrimination against blacks in employment and other areas. Weber, however, pointed to language in the act prohibiting employers and unions from discriminating "against any individual because of his race." [Section 703(d)] Justice William Brennan, writing the majority opinion of the Supreme Court, conceded that the literal wording of the Civil Rights Act supported Weber's claim. But Brennan argued that the act had to be interpreted in the light of the original purpose of Congress, which was to reduce serious black unemployment brought on by years of racial discrimination. Brennan also maintained that the Civil Rights Act did not specifically forbid private employers from voluntarily using racial preferences to overcome past discrimination. Dissenting in this decision, Justice (now Chief Justice) Rehnquist declared that the Kaiser program required racial quotas, as it the Bakke case, and was in violation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act (United Steelworkers of America v. Weber, 443 U.S. 193, 1979). In 1980, the Supreme Court upheld a federal law requiring 10 percent of federal funds to state and local governments for public construction projects to be "set aside" for contracts with minority-owned businesses. Chief Justice Warren Burger, for the majority, argued that equal protection of the law was not violated since Congress intended to remedy past discrimination against minority-owned businesses. In his dissent, however, Justice Potter Stewart stated that the Constitution demands strict "color blindness" in dealing with all citizens. (Fullilove v. Klutznick, 449 U.S. 448, 1980). In 1989, the Supreme Court decided a series of cases on affirmative action. Among other things, these decisions concluded that minorities and women had to prove that intentional and specific discrimination had occurred before relying on preferential programs. (See City of Richmond v. J. A. Croson Co., 109 S.Ct. 706, 1989). In 1990, the Supreme Court reviewed two affirmative action policies adopted by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in Metro Broadcasting, Inc. v. Federal Communications Commission [497 U.S. 547]. The first policy requires the FCC to weigh minority ownership and participation in management as a positive factor when considering applications for licenses for new radio or television broadcast stations. The "distress sale" policy, the FCC's second affirmative action policy, allows a broadcaster on the verge of losing his or her license to transfer that license to a minority enterprise before the FCC resolves the matter in a hearing. The FCC adopted these policies in accordance with the objective of the Communications Act of 1934 to promote broadcast diversity. The court ruled 5-4 that the FCC policies do not violate equal protection. Justice Brennan delivered the opinion of the court, writing that the FCC affirmative action policies "bear the imprimatur of longstanding congressional support and direction and are substantially related to the achievement of the important governmental objective of broadcast diversity." In a dissenting opinion, Jusice Kennedy expressed "regret that after a century of judicial opinions we interpret the Constitution to do no more than move us from 'separate but equal' to 'unequal but benign.'" In the 1995 case of Adarand Constructors v. Pena [515 U.S. 200], the court ruled 5-4 that all race-based affirmative action programs and policies must be analyzed on a case-by-case basis by a reviewing court under strict scrutiny. Furthermore, the court held that all federal racial classifications must narrowly tailored to serve a "compelling governmental interest." Adarand replaced the less rigorous standards of scrutiny put forth in Fullilove and Metro Broadcasting with a standard of strict scrutiny. The Supreme Court will surely revisit this constitutional controversy in the near future. Constitutional Question #4 Do affirmative action programs that give preferential treatment to minorities and women violate the equal-protection clause of the 14th Amendment and the Civil Rights Act of 1964? For Further Information Constitutional Rights Foundation Research Links: Law Religion and Schools Americans United for Separation of Church and State American Center for Law and Justice Links to Organizations and Web-sites Related to Religion and Politics and Contemporary Church-State Issues Huge collection of links from Baylor University Church-State Studies. Church-State Relations Links from the Open Directory Project. Google Directory: Church-State Relations: Public Schools Social Issues: Prayer in Schools From the Multinomah Public Library. Other Lessons From Constitutional Rights Foundation on Religion and Schools:
Right to Privacy and Abortion American Center for Law and Justice Abortion: All Sides of the Issue Links and articles from ReligiousTolerance.org. Open Directory Project: Abortion Links. Google Directory: Abortion Links. Issue: Abortion Links for pro-choice and pro-life organizations. From Politics1.
Abortion Articles and links from the Atlantic Monthly. The History Guy: Issues: Abortion Links. Social Issues: Abortion From the Multinomah Public Library. Issues: Abortion Links from Project Vote Smart. Due Process of Law and the Exclusionary Rule Criminal Justice in America Links: Chapter 6: Police and the Law Links on criminal procedure, search and seizure, confessions, and the exclusionary rule. Affirmative Action
Issues: Affirmative Action Links from Project Vote Smart. Social Issues: Affirmative Action From the Multinomah Public Library. A C T I V I T Y New Decisions to Come: a Moot Court
Voting Before the Revolution For the most part, American colonists adopted the voter qualifications that they had known in England. Typically, a voter had to be a free, adult, male resident of his county, a member of the predominant religious group, and a "freeholder." A freeholder owned land worth a certain amount of money. Colonists believed only freeholders should vote because only they had a permanent stake in the stability of society. Freeholders also paid the bulk of the taxes. Other persons, as the famous English lawyer William Blackstone put it, "are in so mean a situation as to be esteemed to have no will of their own." Becoming a freeholder was not difficult for a man in colonial America since land was plentiful and cheap. Thus up to 75 percent of the adult males in most colonies qualified as voters. But this voting group fell far short of a majority of the people then living in the English colonies. After eliminating everyone under the age of 21, all slaves and women, most Jews and Catholics, plus those men too poor to be freeholders, the colonial electorate consisted of perhaps only 10 percent to 20 percent of the total population. The act of voting in colonial times was quite different from today. In many places, election days were social occasions accompanied by much eating and drinking. When it came time to vote, those qualified would simply gather together and signify their choices by voice or by standing up. As time went on, this form of public voting was gradually abandoned in favor of secret paper ballots. For a while, however, some colonies required published lists showing how each voter cast his ballot. Voting fraud and abuses were common in the colonies. Sometimes large landowners would grant temporary freeholds to landless men who then handed the deeds back after voting. Individuals were paid to vote a certain way or paid not to vote at all. Corrupt voting officials would allow unqualified persons to vote while denying legitimate voters the right to cast their ballots. Intimidation and threats, even violence, were used to persuade people how to vote. Ballots were faked, purposely miscounted, "lost," and destroyed. After declaring independence on July 4, 1776, each former English colony wrote a state constitution. About half the states attempted to reform their voting procedures. The trend in these states was to do away with the freehold requirement in favor of granting all taxpaying, free, adult males the right to vote. Since few men escaped paying taxes of some sort, suffrage (the right to vote) expanded in these states. Vermont's constitution went even further in 1777 when it became the first state to grant universal manhood suffrage (i.e., all adult males could vote). Some states also abolished religious tests for voting. It was in New Jersey that an apparently accidental phrase in the new state constitution permitted women to vote in substantial numbers for the first time in American history. "Of Government in Petticoats!!!" The provision on suffrage in the New Jersey state constitution of 1776 granted the right to vote to "all inhabitants" who were of legal age (21), owned property worth 50 English pounds (not necessarily a freehold), and resided in a county for at least one year. No one is sure what was meant by "all inhabitants" since the New Jersey constitutional convention was held in secret. But it appears that no agitation for woman suffrage occurred at the convention. After the state constitution was ratified by the voters (presumably only men voted), little comment on the possibility of women voting took place in the state for 20 years. Even so, one state election law passed in 1790 included the words "he or she." It is unclear how many, or if any, women actually voted during this time. In 1797, a bitter contest for a seat in the New Jersey state legislature erupted between John Condict, a Jeffersonian Republican from Newark, and William Crane, a Federalist from Elizabeth. Condict won the election, but only by a narrow margin after Federalists from Elizabeth turned out a large number of women to vote for Crane. This was probably the first election in U.S. history in which a substantial group of women went to the polls. Newspaper coverage of women voting was widespread in the state and included the publication of a new song titled, "The Freedom of Election." The sarcastic last verse illustrates pretty much what the attitude of most New Jersey men must have been: Then freedom hail! thy powers prevail New Jersey newspapers debated whether the state constitution really intended for women to vote. Some argued that the words "all inhabitants" surely did not include children, slaves, and foreigners. If this were the case, they continued, women should not be allowed to vote either because they never had before. Others maintained that perhaps widows and single women who owned property worth 50 pounds should be able to vote. Married women were automatically excluded from voting since at this time all property in a marriage legally belonged to the husband. One New Jersey opponent of woman suffrage wrote in 1799, "It is evident, that women, generally, are neither, by nature, nor habit, nor education, nor by their necessary condition in society, fitted to perform this duty [of voting] with credit to themselves, or advantage to the public." In 1806, Newark and Elizabeth again faced off at the polls, this time over the site of a new county courthouse. During three days of voting, partisans from both towns used every legal and illegal device to gather the most votes. Men and boys, white and black, citizens and aliens, residents and non-residents, voted (often many times). Women and girls, married and single, with and without property, joined the election frenzy. Finally, males dressed up as females and voted one more time. Newark, with 1,600 qualified voters, counted over 5,000 votes; Elizabeth, with 1,000 legal voters, counted more than 2,200 votes. Although Newark claimed victory, the voting was so blatantly fraudulent that the state legislature canceled the election. The following year, the state legislature passed a new election law to clear up the confusion over who was qualified to vote in New Jersey. The law declared that since it was "highly necessary to the safety, quiet, good order, and dignity of the state," no persons were to be allowed to vote except free white men who either owned property worth 50 pounds or were taxpayers. Such voters would also have to be citizens and residents of the county where they voted. The campaign for this new election law was led by John Condict, the legislator who was nearly defeated in 1797 when many women voted for his opponent. Thus, in 1807, with little debate in the all-male state legislature, and no public protest from the state's female population, the experiment with woman suffrage in New Jersey came to an end. Expanding the Right to Vote Although for a time some states like New Jersey wanted to limit suffrage, the trend throughout U.S. history has been to expand the right to vote. At first, the main debate was over property tests. But by the Civil War, most states had replaced the freehold and other property requirements with universal white manhood suffrage or something close to it. With the end of slavery, reformers turned to securing the right to vote for black freedmen. While this was accomplished constitutionally with the ratification of the 15th Amendment in 1870, another century passed before discrimination against black voters was finally suppressed. Women did not win the right to vote until the adoption of the 19th Amendment in 1920, over 100 years after women lost the vote in New Jersey. In 1964, the 24th Amendment prohibited denying anyone the right to vote in federal elections for failing to pay a voting or any other tax. Finally, in 1971, the 26th Amendment reduced the legal voting age to 18 in all elections. For Discussion and Writing
For Further Information American Colonist's Library A huge collection of early American primary documents. One Woman, One Vote: A Brief History and Guide The site to this PBS program the American Experience includes A Brief Timeline of the Woman Suffrage Movement and a History of the Suffrage Movement. Voting in America A history of Voting in the United States. From the PBS Democracy Project. A C T I V I T Y Who Should Vote in New Jersey? The New Jersey election law of 1807 limited the right to vote to free white male property owners or taxpayers. There appeared to have been little public debate on this law when it was introduced into the state legislature. What do you think would have been the opinion of those denied the right to vote by this law? How would supporters of the law in the legislature have answered them? This role-play activity will give you a chance to find out.
On the Road to Revolution With Boris Yeltsin
As the Berlin Wall fell and the Cold War ended, important changes were also taking place within the Soviet Union. When Mikhail Gorbachev became the Soviet leader in 1985, he introduced a new program called perestroika.Gorbachev defined this as the "restructuring" of the rapidly declining Soviet-socialist economy. Although Gorbachev was vague on the details, he seemed to want his country to move away from centralized economic controls and toward a free-market economy. Along with perestroika, Gorbachev also promoted a new spirit of openness, or glasnost, which meant more freedom of expression, including the right of Soviet citizens to criticize the Communist Party. Many Soviets interpreted these changes as a welcome shift toward freedom and democracy. But no one in the Soviet Union could have foreseen the far-reaching challenge to Communist Party rule brought on by a civil engineer from the Ural Mountains named Boris Yeltsin. "A Little Bit of a Hooligan" Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin was born on February 1, 1931, at the beginning of a period of famine and brutal dictatorship under Joseph Stalin. Facing starvation, Yeltsin's peasant family moved from a collective farm to a construction site where his father worked as a laborer. Yeltsin grew up in a tough neighborhood near Sverdlovsk, a major city about 1,000 miles east of Moscow. He was always getting into fights and trouble. In his own words, he was "a bit of a hooligan." At age 11, he stole a hand grenade from an army storehouse. When he tried to take the grenade apart, it exploded, and he lost the forefinger and thumb of his left hand. Despite his reputation as a roughneck, Yeltsin earned high marks in school and excelled in several sports, especially volleyball. At his elementary-school graduation ceremony, he spoke out against a particularly cruel teacher. The school board then denied his promotion to secondary school. But he personally appealed his case to the local Communist Party committee and won the right to continue his education. A Party Boss After attending secondary school, Yeltsin studied civil engineering at the Urals Polytechnic Institute in Sverdlovsk. He did well in his studies and also played on the city's volleyball team. After graduating in 1955, he supervised many construction projects and became well-known as an efficient and hard-working manager. He found himself in frequent disagreement, however, with Communist Party bureaucrats known in the Soviet Union as "apparatchiks." Yeltsin married Naya (Anastasia) Girina, a civil engineer whom he first met at the Polytechnic Institute. The Yeltsins became the parents of two daughters, Lena and Tanya. Membership in the Communist Party was required for any significant advancement in Soviet society. Yelsin joined the Communist Party in 1961. By 1968, he was a full-time party official, and in 1976 he was appointed first secretary of the Sverdlovsk district. "In those days," he wrote in his autobiography, "a provincial first secretary of the party was a god, a czar—master of his province—and on virtually any issue the first secretary's opinion was final." In this position, Yeltsin first met Gorbachev. Gorbachev was the Communist Party's first secretary at Stavropol in the Caucasus region, about 700 miles south of Moscow. When Gorbachev became the general secretary of the Communist Party (and leader of the Soviet Union) in 1985, he brought Yeltsin to Moscow to become head of state construction. Within a few months, again with Gorbachev's backing, Yeltsin was appointed chairman of the Moscow Committee of the Communist Party, a position akin to being mayor of the city. Gorbachev wanted him to clean up the corruption in Moscow's local government. Yeltsin took his new assignment very seriously. He made unannounced visits to government-operated stores where he learned about skimming practices, bribery, and kickbacks. He discovered secret deliveries of top-quality meat and other goods to Communist Party officials. He observed long lines of ordinary customers who often ended up being overcharged for the few available items. Yeltsin proceeded to fire hundreds of apparatchiks, Communist Party bureaucrats, who were participating in the widespread corruption. Yeltsin wanted to go further, but he said in his autobiography that Gorbachev disapproved. "Most of all," Yeltsin wrote, "[Gorbachev] was afraid of laying hands on the party's bureaucratic machine, that holy of holiest of our system." In 1986, Yeltsin was appointed a non-voting member of the Communist Party Politburo, the real center of power in the Soviet Union. As a member of the Politburo, Yeltsin soon clashed with those trying to slow down Gorbachev's perestroika program. Yeltsin criticized the special privileges enjoyed by Communist Party officials. These privileges included special stores, exclusive medical facilities, and even dachas, country villas that were available only to the party elite. To make his point, Yeltsin began riding city subways and buses rather than his chauffeured limousine. He went to neighborhood clinics for his medical needs and turned down a palatial dacha (once used by Gorbachev). Yeltsin's outspoken criticism of Communist Party corruption made him very popular with the people of Moscow. The Break With Gorbachev By the fall of 1987, Yeltsin had concluded that the leadership of the Communist Party was unwilling to make the radical changes necessary to make the country work. This included a much faster shift to a free-market economy unhindered by Communist Party apparatchiks. Yeltsin placed much of the blame for what he perceived as the shortcomings of perestroika on Gorbachev himself. According to Yeltsin, Gorbachev never worked out a systematic blueprint for his reform program. But the Soviet leader's main weakness, in Yeltsin's view, was a "fear of taking the decisive but difficult steps that are needed." At a meeting of the Communist Party's Central Committee on October 21, 1987, Yeltsin announced his resignation from the Moscow Committee and the Politburo but not before once again blasting the party and its leadership. He was then forced to endure months of scathing attacks from Gorbachev and other party leaders. But Gorbachev finally reassigned Yeltsin as first deputy chairman of state construction (a demotion, but in Stalin's day he would have been shot). Political Comeback Although Yeltsin was a "non-person" in the eyes of Communist Party leaders, the people of Moscow had not forgotten him. Early in 1989, Muscovites insisted that local party officials place Yeltsin's name on a list of candidates for election to the Congress of People's Deputies. The Congress was to be made up of representatives chosen by Soviet voters. It would be the first competitive elections since the Russian Revolution of 1917, when the Communist Party took control of the country. From the 2,250 deputies elected to the Congress, nearly 600 would be selected as members of the Supreme Soviet, the national legislature of the Soviet Union. On March 26, 1989, Yeltsin won 89 percent of the vote in his Moscow district, defeating the handpicked candidate of the Communist Party (and of Gorbachev). When the Congress of Deputies met in May, party leaders blocked Yeltsin from becoming a member of the Supreme Soviet. But a reformist deputy gave up his seat in favor of Yeltsin. Later, the deputies, still largely controlled by the Communist Party, chose Gorbachev as president of the Supreme Soviet (in effect, president of the Soviet Union). Yeltsin helped form a group of reformist deputies who demanded eliminating a provision in the Soviet constitution making the Communist Party the only legal political party in the country. Under this provision, Communist Party bosses would nominate all candidates for elected offices. The provision was removed in 1990 with Gorbachev's consent. The First Elected Leader In June 1990, Yeltsin was nominated for president of the legislature of the Russian republic, the largest and most important of the Soviet Union's 15 republics (comparable to states of the United States). Yeltsin won, but only barely, after a bitter fight between his supporters and Communist Party deputies backed by Gorbachev. A month later, Yeltsin resigned from the Communist Party. As the new leader of the Russian republic, Yeltsin soon began to assert his independence from the national government and Gorbachev. Yeltsin claimed that Russian laws outranked those of the Soviet Union. He pressed for the legalization of privately owned property such as farmland. He argued for a 500-day transition to a free-market economy. Moreover, he charged that Gorbachev's central government was "incapable of managing the country's affairs." During a TV interview in February 1991, Yeltsin shocked everyone by calling for Gorbachev's immediate resignation. Yeltsin accused Gorbachev of deceiving the people by failing to enact economic reforms and by taking on dictatorial powers. Gorbachev angrily responded that radicals like Yeltsin were leading the country "right up to civil war." In March, Communist Party leaders demanded Yeltsin's dismissal as president of the Russian legislature. His supporters immediately appealed to the people of Moscow to protest this move in a mass demonstration. Gorbachev countered by asking the Moscow city council to ban the demonstration for the sake of public order. When the council refused, he ordered the Soviet Interior Ministry to take over the city's police power. More than 50,000 troops were ordered into Moscow to enforce the demonstration ban. In spite of the troops, over 100,000 Muscovites peacefully marched to support Yeltsin and to denounce Gorbachev. Yeltsin beat back the attempt by the Communist Party to remove him from office. He then quickly asked the legislature to schedule an unprecedented special election allowing the people to vote directly for the president of the Russian republic. Yeltsin faced five opponents for the presidency of Russia. Wherever he went in the sprawling republic, he met large, enthusiastic crowds of supporters. "I believe in the rebirth of Russia," he told them. In his speeches he used a new Russian political term: departizatsiya, which means "departification." This "departification" referred specifically to the Communist Party, which had enjoyed exclusive control in all matters of Soviet politics for so long. By a 60-percent majority, the voters on election day made Yeltsin the first democratically elected leader in the 1,000-year history of Russia. On July 10, 1991, he was sworn in as the president of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. Gorbachev congratulated Yeltsin at a ceremony held in Moscow's Palace of Congresses. Yeltsin would now begin his push for greater Russian independence from the Soviet Union. The Second Russian Revolution After intense negotiations, Gorbachev, Yeltsin, and other republic leaders agreed to sign a Treaty of Union granting greater independence to the republics. On August 18, 1991, two days before the treaty was to be signed, apparatchiks opposing the decentralization proposed in the Treaty attempted a coup. Gorbachev, vacationing on the Black Sea, was placed under house arrest. The apparatchiks had struck at the right moment. The command structure was still centralized: The Treaty of Union had not been signed yet. Gorbachev's popularity had dipped to an all-time low. And he was away from Moscow. A coup in 1964 had toppled Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev while he was vacationing. The coup should have worked. The apparatchiks, led by senior officials of the Communist Party, KGB (secret police), and army officers, had the force of the traditional power structure behind them. To give the coup a pretence of legality, they enlisted Vice President Gennady Yanayev. Yanayev broadcasted that due to Gorbachev's poor health, Yanayev was taking over as interim president and declaring a state of emergency. Tanks rumbled through the streets of Moscow. But the apparatchiks had failed to arrest Yeltsin. Yeltsin, standing atop a tank outside the Russian parliament (the White House), gave a speech condemning the coup. He called for a general strike and for civil disobedience. Thousands of people answered his call. They gathered around the White House to protect it from attack. When the order to attack came, the unbelievable happened. The officers refused to obey the order. The 1991 coup unraveled quickly after that. In total, the coup attempt lasted only 72 hours. But when Gorbachev returned to Moscow, he faced a vastly changed power structure. The republics were no longer seeking greater independence from the Soviet Union; they were now declaring their independence. Gorbachev could not appoint new apparatchiks to fill the positions of those involved in the coup: He had to appoint Yeltsin supporters. And he could no longer claim he could reform the Communist Party. Gorbachev announced his resignation from the party and ordered the Central Committee of the Communist Party to disband. Seventy-four years of Communist Party rule were over. The country had experienced a second Russian Revolution.Russia: Approaching the Millenium Yeltsin's 11 years of presidency were filled with staggering changes, some positive and others negative. In 1992, Yeltsin enacted dramatic and largely inflationary economic reforms. Yeltsin envisioned a program of military spending cuts, privitization, and free trade. In November 1992, however, Yeltsin appointed pro-inflationist Viktor Gerashchenko as Head of the Central Bank of Russia. Inflation devalued savings and wages of most Russians. Furthermore, low import and high domestic manufacturing taxes led to a nosedive in Russian production. Thus, Yeltsin's economic reforms became widely known as "shock without therapy." In 1993, the Congress of People's Deputies of Russia tried to impeach Yeltsin and fell short by over 70 votes. Yeltsin soon disbanded the congress in violation of the constitution. Not long afterward, parliamentary opposition began supporting Vice President Alexander Rutskoi for president, and another military coup erupted. Before Yeltsin's supporters suppressed the coup, the White House was bombed and set on fire and several hundred Russians were killed. In December 1993, a new Russian constitution granting greater authority to the president was adopted. In 1994, Russia's desperate economic situation worsened when the ruble lost one-fifth of its total value against the dollar on day that has come to be known as "Black Tuesday." After this day, one American dollar was equivalent to 3,926 rubles. Russia's dire economic situation led to an increase in organized crime and unemployment. The GDP and standard of living fell drastically, leaving one-third of all Russians living below the official poverty line of $60 a month. Education, the police force, the military industry, and health care suffered the most, further perpetuating Russia's social problems. In 1995, Yeltsin refused to put Russian troops in Bosnia under NATO command. Yeltsin and others feared the eastward expansion of NATO, because of its Cold War role of encirclement and military intimidation. With the 1996 election approaching, Yeltsin suffered two major heart attacks. He looked weak and tired, and Russian voters became concerned that he was not sufficiently robust to meet the demands of his job. During his campaign, however, he tried to address some of Russia's economic anxieties. He increased student grants and signed a decree restoring the value of personal savings. In addition, numerous American political consultants used U.S.-style political polls and marketing techniques to influence the Russian voting public. Yeltsin narrowly won re-election before undergoing serious coronary bipass surgery. Many Russians believed that Yeltsin would die soon after his surgery. But he survived and continued in his capacity as Russia's leader. In 1997, he completed an extensive overhaul of his cabinet. He also experienced a humiliating defeat in the Chechen war for independence, a war that had been raging since 1994. On December 28, 1999, Yeltsin resigned, explaining that Russia needed a new political leader to lead it into a new century. For Yeltsin, this leader was his popular protegée Vladimir Putin. Yeltsin named Putin acting president. Soon thereafter, Putin was elected to his own term in a landslide election. People disagree about Yeltsin's place in history. But all would agree that Boris Yeltsin led his country into a new epoch of Russian history. For Discussion and Writing
For Further Information Biographies of Boris Yeltsin:
Book reviews of Yeltsin's autobiography Midnight Diaries:
Russian Presidential Election—1996 Information about the candidates and election. BBC: Russia at the Polls: 1999 Russian News Sources
Selected Resources on Yeltsin Books and other resources. From Questia. Open Directory Project: Yeltsin Many links. A C T I V I T Y What Makes A Free Election? Russian citizens are beginning to experience democracy. Unquestionably, free elections are at the heart of any democratic political system. But what makes a free election? Assume that a Russian TV news reporter is visiting your class and has asked you this question. Form small groups. Each group should first discuss how one of the elements listed below contributes to a free election in a democracy. It should then report its conclusions to the Russian reporter who might be role-played by a student or your teacher (perhaps using a video camera). Elements of a Free Election
The story below is about a fictitious Babylonian tax collector named Tarim-Dagan. While the events in Tarim's story have been invented, they could have happened in King Hammurabi's Babylonia over 3,000 years ago. Hammurabi really existed as did the cities of Babylon and Mari, Tarim's hometown. The descriptions of Babylonian life, including how taxes were collected, are based on archaeological evidence. Much of this evidence consists of thousands of letters (i.e., cuneiform clay tablets) discovered in the ruins of the palace at Mari located on the Euphrates River where it now crosses the border of Syria and Iraq. Taxes and tax collecting are as old as civilization itself. The issues about taxation raised in the story of Tarim-Dagan, the Babylonian "tax farmer," are fundamentally the same as those that emerged in American society thousands of years later after the passage of the 16th Amendment authorizing the federal income tax. "To Give Light To The Land" By the year 1760 B.C. during the 33rd year of his reign, King Hammurabi of the city of Babylon was the undisputed ruler of an empire of city-states extending more than 600 miles along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in what is now Iraq. In less than five years, Hammurabi had crushed his chief rivals including a former ally, the king of Mari. Mesopotamia, the land where history began, was now called Babylonia. Hammurabi is probably best remembered for his code of laws. Although he did not create the first law code in Mesopotamia, he was the first to impose his laws on a number of cities, each with its own customs and traditions. Evidently, he wanted to unify his newly won empire under a single legal system. He also sought justice for his subjects as shown by these words from the prologue of his code: Hammurabi, the reverent god-fearing prince, to make justice appear in the land, to destroy the evil and the wicked that the strong might not oppress the weak, to rise like the Sun-god over the Black-headed Ones [humans], to give light to the land . . . . Hammurabi also established a bureaucracy of government officials to administer his empire. Among these officials were tax collectors known as "tax farmers." They gave Hammurabi the means to pay for his army, palaces, temples to the gods Shamash and Marduk, and royal lifestyle. Hammurabi also needed tax revenues to maintain the irrigation canals that sustained all life in Babylonia. One of the canals he built was named, "Hammurabi-the-Abundance-of-the-People." The Tax Farmer of Mari Two years after Hammurabi conquered Mari, the assembly of elders of the city met and appointed as their tax farmer a merchant named Tarim-Dagan. Tarim paid a fee of 1,000 shekels to the assembly for the honor of collecting taxes for King Hammurabi. (A shekel was a quarter ounce piece of silver. Coins were not invented for another thousand years.) Of course, Tarim would keep a fair portion of the taxes he collected as his fee. Following his appointment as the tax farmer of Mari, Tarim-Dagan received this letter from King Hammurabi:
In fulfilling his responsibility as tax farmer, Tarim first had to decide what to collect from the people of Mari. Since money was not yet in common use, most people paid their taxes with goods they produced. For example, a farmer would turn over some crops to satisfy his tax obligation. The poor who labored day-to-day simply to feed and clothe themselves usually had nothing to give the tax farmer. They gave the king his due by working a certain number of days on public projects like cleaning irrigation canals. The custom of the land was for the tax farmer to take from one-tenth to one-third of a taxpayer's goods or labor each year depending on how prosperous times were. Tarim considered this custom, but chose this year to collect more. He thought this was necessary because of the demands made by King Hammurabi in his letter. Tarim also had to figure in his expenses such as the fee he had already paid to the assembly of elders. Moreover, he would have to hire assistants and guards, rent storehouses, and arrange for transporting the king's share of the tax goods down river to Babylon. Finally, there was the matter of Tarim's own fee. He wanted to make sure he would be left with a sizable profit. Therefore, he decided to set the tax rate at 50 percent for every household in Mari. Tax Revolt! Tarim had trouble collecting taxes as soon as word spread that he was demanding half the income or labor of the people of Mari. The wealthy nobles objected first. Most had received large grants of farmland from the former kings of Mari, some from King Hammurabi himself. The nobles claimed their privileged position in society exempted them from paying any taxes at all. The priests of Mari told Tarim that they, too, should not have to pay any taxes. They argued that Dagan, Adad, and the other gods would be angry if forced to give up some of their possessions even though the temple priests of Mari were among the largest landowners of the city. The small farm owners, who made up the most of households in Mari, were even more upset with Tarim. They protested that while taxing half the barley or dates of someone who owned hundreds of acres of land was surely a burden, taking the same portion from those who farmed only a few acres would plunge them into poverty and starvation. Others joined the growing unrest over Tarim's high tax rate. Shepherds denounced his demand for not only 50 percent of their sheepskins but also half of their newborn lambs. Mari's merchants and caravan traders, including some strong-minded women, complained that they would lose their businesses to foreigners if they had to turn over half their profits to the tax farmer. Artisans, like Mari's famed chariot makers, believed that Tarim kept their best work for himself while sending inferior goods to the king. It was the lowest and poorest of Mari, however, who first acted against the oppressive tax. Laborers, expected to work half a year for the king, simply refused to show up to clean the canals or rebuild the city walls as ordered by Tarim. When he sent his guards to round up these common people, they hid or ran away. Desperate, Tarim commanded his chief assistants to capture a few workers, cut off their heads, and carry them on poles from place to place to stop the disobedience. But the canals remained clogged with silt and the city walls stayed in disrepair. The farmers, both large and small, now added to Tarim's troubles by putting sand in sacks of grain or sending him dates that had rotted or were infested with rats and insects. Shepherds drove their flocks of sheep into the desert away from Tarim's prying eyes. Merchants and traders fixed their records to show that their profits were lower than they really were. Artisans hid their wares. Now on the verge of panic, Tarim hired more armed guards and directed them to confiscate the tax goods still owed by the people. Violence flashed when Tarim's guards broke into storage areas, shops, and even people's homes. A tax revolt now threatened to turn into a rebellion. A Perplexing Problem The people now went to the governor of Mari to protest Tarim's excessive tax rate and highhanded actions. The governor was perplexed. On one hand, he knew that King Hammurabi expected the recently conquered city to flood Babylon with tributes of tax goods and services. On the other hand, the governor feared that a rebellion in Mari would so anger Hammurabi that he would send his army to destroy the city completely. So the governor did what most Mesopotamian leaders would do in a difficult situation. He called upon the services of his diviner. A diviner was a priest who professed the ability to foretell the future and interpret omens. In this case, the governor's diviner sacrificed a lamb and carefully counted the spots on its liver. The diviner revealed that the gods intended King Hammurabi himself to settle the dispute between the people and the tax farmer of Mari. Mesopotamian kings at this time tended to be hands-on rulers. Therefore, it is not surprising that King Hammurabi would agree to involve himself directly in the affairs of one of his provincial cities. Before he listened to all the parties in the case, Hammurabi asked for a report from his spy in Mari, Kibri-Adad: To Lord Hammurabi say, thus says Kibri-Adad: The people of Mari complain much about their taxes, but when do taxpayers not complain? The harvest was good this year, and the city profits greatly from foreign trade. Tarim-Dagan takes half for taxes then takes half of that for himself. The richest merchants offer him shekels to reduce their taxes. For Discussion and Writing
For Further Information Ancient Civilizations: Mesopotamia From the British Museum's site for teachers. ABZU A guide to information related to the study of the ancient Near East on the web. Ancient Mesopotamia: 7000 to 500 B.C. A timeline The Code of Hammurabi The story of the code. From Law Buzz. The Code of Hammurabi (the text translated into English):
Ancient History Sourcebook: Mesopotamia: Babylonia Huge collection of primary source documents. Hammurabi From the Catholic Encyclopedia. Hammurabi From the Encyclopedia of the Orient. The Code of Hammurabi Background on the code. Assyro-Babylonian Mythology FAQ Spiritual Systems of Mesopotamia Overview of some of the gods. Two web pages on cuneiform from the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology:
Iraq History The complete history—from ancient to modern times. Lessons and Teacher Resources:
Understanding Primary Sources: Hammurabi's Code of Laws From Houghton Mifflin. Ancient Mesopotamia From the Core Values Internet Library, Oakland Unified School System. A C T I V I T Y Hammurabi's Tax Court We do not know exactly how Hammurabi decided disputes that came before him personally, but we know that he established a court system that admitted documents and the testimony of witnesses as evidence. The following activity utilizes these familiar courtroom elements to settle the dispute described in the fictional story of Tarim-Dagan. Trial Participants The class should be divided into the following roles: Complainers: These are the taxpayer groups who each have a complaint to make about Tarim-Dagan and how he went about collecting the king's taxes.
Defenders: Tarim-Dagan along with his chief assistants have been called to Babylon to defend themselves before King Hammurabi. Judge: The outcome of this trial will be decided by King Hammurabi acting as the judge. He will listen to the complainers and defenders and then decide the following questions that have been raised in this case:
Trial Procedure
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