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Podcast: New Books in Law
Episode: Paul A. Lombardo, "Three Generations, No Imbeciles: Eugenics, the Supreme Court, and Buck v. Bell" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2022)
Description: âThree generations of imbeciles are enoughâ were the infamous words U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. wrote in 1927. In Buck v. Bell, an almost unanimous Court upheld a Virginia law allowing the sterilization of people the state found to be âsocially inadequateâ and âfeebleminded.â This landmark decision allowed the eugenics movement to take full effect, with multiple states passing similar laws. In Three Generations, No Imbeciles: Eugenics, the Supreme Court, and Buck v. Bell (Johns Hopkins UP, 2022), Dr. Paul Lombardo unpacks the case of an individual â Carrie Buck â to argue that the case not only represents the...