Over at Concurring Opinions, Gerard Magliocca has an interesting post on how Supreme Court Justice Pierce Butler’s Catholicism may have influenced his dissent in Buck v. Bell, the famous 1927 case upholding sterilization of the mentally handicapped. Apparently Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, who wrote the majority opinion in the case (“Three generations of imbeciles are enough”), thought Catholicism did influence Butler’s vote. Check it out.

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