Second written exercise: Anatomy of a Supreme Court Decision
Your job is to write a research paper about a Supreme Court Case entitled M. Claude Screws v. United States. M. Claude Screws is the name of a Georgia sheriff who beat to death a black man named Bobby Hall. The federal government prosecuted him. Although this is a research paper, all the material you need is available online. Beware: the raw material you will be working with will be primary source material--the actual files of the justices, the Department of Justice, and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Primary source material is not immediately understandable--you have to figure things out. I have not edited these documents -- no doubt there will be items that are more important than others.
This is to be a history paper. I am asking you to think and write like an historian. You will be writing a narrative of how the Supreme Court decided this case, but you are not just telling a story. There should be a point, a thesis. Your paper, then, will be a persuasive essay. You are telling a story but at the same time trying to prove some point. Read the available source material -- all of it (anyone not using all the available material will get a lower grade). When forumulating a thesis, consider these questions: What conclusion do you reach about the meaning of what you have read? What did you learn? Why do you think the Court decided the case as it did? You must be able to state your thesis in one sentence. See me if you have problems.
Graduate students: do a thorough historiographical investigation of this case. In your introduction, summarize what other scholars have said about it.
You must use footnotes or endnotes to cite your sources. With so many sources available, I need to know where you are getting your information. Papers without sources properly cited in footnotes or endnotes will not be graded.
When you go to electronic reserve for this class, you will find four folders of material, all photocopies of documents from the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress and the National Archives.
1) NAACP Papers. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People had a file on this case. This is the file in its entirety.
2) Transcript of record. The transcript of the Screws trial is in the National Archives. I photocopied most of it, getting the key parts.
3) Harlan Fiske Stone Papers. Stone was Chief Justice of the United States when the Court decided this case. He had a file on the case and this is that file in its entirety, from the Library of Congress in Washington.
4) Robert Jackson Papers. Jackson was an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court when the Screws case passed through. He also had a file on the case and this is that file in its entirety, from the Library of Congress.
5) Oral argument before the Supreme Court. The Department of Justice had a transcript made of the solicitor general's argument to the Court. You can read the argument and also the questions asked by the justices.
I also have information from the Frank Murphy Papers, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, at my website.
How long should your paper be? About ten pages. You will have to be selective--after reading all the material I have on reserve, you will know a lot about this case. Number your pages.
I will be looking to see if you wrote a clear thesis statement on page one and backed it up through the rest of your paper. If it looks like you ignored some of the evidence provided, that would not be good. Your paper should show that you read all the material. There may be some things that contradict your theory, but you should cover that material as well, explaining why it does not change your thinking.