Modern "Civil Rights" is a parallel legal system in the US that overrides the former Anglo-derived legal system (though both are still on the books) whenever they conflict.
That's why you get people on the Right muttering about "muh Constitution" wondering why Supreme Court rulings that were considered impossible 70 years ago are commonplace today. Civil Rights legislation even overrides the Bill of Rights.
It is what is. But it's 100% anachronistic to being talking about Civil Rights rulings in 1905—that's roughly equivalent to discussing Marxist governance in ancient Rome.
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To those downvoting, explain the right already lost in the 1st Amendment to Civil Rights: the right to be a racist asshole and choose who you associate with. That was 100% legal under any Anglo-derived system (hell, it's literally in the Bill of Rights!), but it's obviously not legal under a Civil Rights regime. Hence, what was once legal is now illegal, "muh Constitution" and "muh Bill of Rights" or not.
And why didn't it take an amendment to the Constitution to lose that right? Precisely because Civil Rights established its own legal system and justifications, allowing the Supreme Court to re-interpret previously held rights through the lens of Civil Rights whenever convenient. Boom: no more legislation and laws supporting racist assholes.
This is also why things like The Federalist Society and their quote-unquote originalists are so potentially damaging. When they say "originalist", they literally mean the original Anglo-derived legal system (complete with racist assholes) vs. the new Civil Rights-derived legal system. That's what the conflict is about.
Nothing I've written here should be remotely controversial.
[0] Not strictly true, the rulings started in the mid-1950s with Brown v. Board of Education, and you can find various overrides of the Anglo-derived system even further back.... However, I would argue the legal (as opposed to ethical) basis for earlier decisions is dubious, and didn't actually arrive until the mid-1960s.
edit: mild clarity
Title Case :P. I stand by the idea that modern "Civil Rights" began in earnest after WW2 and was primarily encoded in legislation in the mid-1960s (though some decisions were earlier—Brown v. Board of Education for example), and that modern Civil Rights (as a broad concept) supersedes the Anglo-derived legal system the US was founded on and replaces it with a different (and at times conflicting) set of principles.
Do you actually disagree with any of that? I'm genuinely curious to find someone who thinks that the law didn't fundamentally change in favor of modern Civil Rights after WW2, vs. what came before…
I agree it shouldn't be, but apparently it is, given the downvotes you're getting. I've upvoted you to try to compensate a little, for what it's worth.
