The Politics Behind Justice: Loving v. Virginia and the Making of Civil Rights Law

Farce Arrangements & Macro-Influence

This section is where macro-influence becomes most visible. In this section, we’ll learn how terms like “equality” and “justice” are not objective to most people. They’re highly subjective terms, and everyone has their own meaning of them. Misinterpreting them can result in violent revolutions in the street. To avoid that, any interpretation of them must satisfy all involved influential groups. We’ll also learn how the US avoided a 2nd Civil War for nearly a hundred years because a few key people understood macro-influence.

In the previous section, we’ve learned how the very systems that are supposed to deliver justice are haunted by political interests and how good judges, lawyers, prosecutors, etc. do their job despite a system clogged with political sludge. The system doesn't empower them. It actively makes their job harder.

A legal appeal is a request to a higher court to overturn a decision made by a lower court. It’s basically going to a judge’s boss and saying, “I think this judge made a wrong decision; can you take a look at it again?” A judge may deliver a judgment and then find out that every small aspect of their decision is appealed as if they were a criminal.

Think about it from this perspective. If you don’t like your daddy, then you go to your grandpa every weekend and tell him every small thing your daddy did wrong. If Grandpa held a stick over Daddy, your daddy would eventually start walking on eggshells around you. At that point, your daddy will have a hard time disciplining you. Right? That’s what basically happens to the judges and prosecutors when political influence is not on their side. If they deliver justice and their bosses don’t agree with it, their delivery is overturned. On the other hand, if Daddy is an evil tyrant who beats you and steals your money, you’ll be glad you have Grandpa to go to when needed. Right? This is useful when a judge or a prosecutor is a tyrant.

Ultimately, influence—especially political influence—goes a long way in bending the legal system. This bending can happen in the right direction or the wrong direction; that’s a matter of opinion. What one group thinks is right is wrong in the eyes of another group.

Remember, when I say politics, I do not mean political parties. By political reasons, I mean it all happens for reasons that benefit more influential groups, at the expense of less influential groups. It’s the same thing as a gang of 51 men holding someone hostage to make them sign a confession, then personally escort them to a cell and hand deliver that confession to the cops. It’s not really fair. A trial by combat might be more fair because it’ll be one-on-one.

Most rules are structurally skewed. They benefit the more influential groups at the expense of the less influential groups. They're designed to be like that. It only works in favor of the less influential group when another more influential group sides with them.

A real structural protection would be to charge minorities fewer taxes. Why not? They would be underrepresented at every point in their interaction with the government. It is an inevitable fact. That’s what fixing a problem looks like at the level of principles, not at the level of rule-making. It’s like the government saying, “Hey minorities, we probably cannot fully protect you from the unfair system; you'll have to spend your money on lawsuits to help yourself against the discrimination. Until we can ensure you’re fully represented and protected by the system, we’re going to charge you fewer taxes.”

However, that never happens, right?

Most governments prefer inefficient and politically infested justice systems over giving their citizens structural protections. Why? Because the former is an opportunity for branding, the latter is a complete solution. If the public’s problems are solved without any further ongoing contributions from the government, then why do they need the government anymore? So governments choose self-preservation over everything else.

In this section, we’ll talk about how the less influential groups find justice for themselves despite self-preserving governments and politically skewed justice systems that allow criminals to walk away but prosecute innocents for political agendas. We’ll do this by studying a few American lawsuits and the stories behind them. We’ll look into these lawsuits with uncomfortable depth to see the entire picture.

Loving v. Virginia & The Arrest

First, let’s dive into the landmark case Loving v. Virginia (1967)^[2]. This case unraveled during the 50’s and the 60’s in a small town named Central Point in Caroline County, Virginia^[5].

Richard was a construction worker. He was friends with a few men and started dating their sister Mildred when she was in high school. They were deeply in love and got married on June 2, 1958, in Washington, D.C., and started living together in their house back in Central Point. They were just another happy family by all accounts. A pair of newlyweds with their entire lives in front of them.

One night, soon after they got married, Mildred woke up to a man standing next to her bed, pointing a light in her face. She saw that more than one man was in their bedroom. The men woke Richard up and demanded to know who Mildred was. Mildred said, “I’m his wife," and the men said, “Not here you’re not.”

The men introduced themselves as the sheriff and his posse. They arrested Richard and Mildred at 2 AM in the middle of the night, charging them with the crime of "cohabiting as man and wife, against the peace and dignity of the Commonwealth."

The cops held them under a $1,000 bond—which was a lot back in the day. Richard’s sister was able to bail him out with the help of a bond company. But the police threatened not to get Mildred out or they would pull Richard back in too. During her detention in jail, Mildred also reported the sheriff threatening her with the threat of letting another male inmate in her jail cell. About 4 days later, Mildred was let go under her father’s care.

Let’s rewind. They were in love. They got married. The cops arrested them, saying them being man and wife somehow disturbed the peace or dignity of the commonwealth.

What seems to be the issue? Also, didn’t Richard and Mildred get married in D.C.?

Well, here’s the issue… Mildred was part-Native American and part-African American. Richard was white. They were an interracial couple. Their marriage was a massive taboo. It seems unfathomable today—and I hope at all points in the future where people are reading this book, criminalizing two people loving each other feels equally absurd.

The police basically told them that their marriage certificate was not valid in their point of view and they’re under arrest. The colored woman must spend more time in jail. Also, in the police’s point of view, their marriage certificate was invalid in Virginia. They broke into their home at 2 AM for all this. Like a massive drug raid. I guess the sheriff's department in Caroline County, Virginia, had a lot of free time on their hands to waste taxpayer money on the arrest and prosecution of couples. Right?

In Virginia, during that time period, marrying across races was prohibited. Virginia followed the “one drop rule," basically saying if you had even one drop of non-white ancestry, you’re not white. You weren’t allowed to marry in Virginia as an interracial couple, so the Lovings had to travel to D.C. to get married. They had a valid D.C. marriage certificate. When the cops invaded their home in the middle of the night, Richard pointed to their D.C. marriage certificate hanging on their wall, and the sheriff basically said, “That’s no good here.”

Both Lovings were unjustly arrested but refused to say they were guilty. After all, their only crime was loving each other. However, if they stuck to their “not guilty” stance, they would’ve been sentenced to 1 year of jail time each. Under the pressure of that, they decided they had to “plead guilty” to the charges.

Also, by pleading guilty, they can never (appeal) ask the courts to revoke their claimed guilt. It’ll be a permanent legal fact.

After pleading guilty, the judge gave them both a 1-year prison sentence. However, the judge suspended that sentence as part of the deal they got for pleading guilty. They were given 25 years of exile from the state of Virginia and were prevented from traveling to Virginia together by Caroline County Circuit Court’s Judge Leon M. Bazile on January 6, 1959.

They basically told the Lovings, "If you say you're guilty, we will sentence you for a year, but we'll pretend that sentence doesn't exist if you leave Virginia for 25 years and don't come back in the same train."

To avoid jail, both Lovings moved to D.C., where they faced financial issues, but at least they were together. Apart from their countless hardships, one day their youngest son got hit by a car. They were devastated. This was the last straw for them. They realized that moving back to Central Point was safest for their family.

In 1963, Mildred wrote a letter to US Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy to tell him about the great injustice done to her family^[9].

Kennedy recommended she go to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), where a young lawyer, Bernard Cohen, took their case^[6], and another young lawyer, Philip Hirschkop, joined them soon after.

They both took their case pro bono.

Free for the sake of justice.

The 14th Amendment

The lawyers were really smart, but they had a tight situation. The Lovings were pressured to plead guilty, and now they cannot go back and say they’re not criminals.

They decided to file a special motion to vacate—a rare legal move to challenge the law itself.

Instead of saying, “Our clients are not criminals," now they were saying, “The law itself is invalid" because they realized that the law banning interracial marriage was unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution.

The 14 Amendment of the US constitution says:

This is the ultimate law of the land.

The 14th Amendment of the US Constitution basically says everyone is equal and has a right to life, freedom (liberty), and property. It also says that states cannot make laws that can change that rule.

Because life, liberty, and property are vague concepts, the 14th Amendment is the ultimate smoking gun to kill any unjust laws that promote inequality in anything.

There was only one issue.

Since they made a deal to suspend their sentence for a 25-year exile, the original judge (Bazile) still had jurisdiction over their case. The motion to vacate had to be argued in front of Judge Bazile again because of this.

It was an extremely risky strategy because of two reasons:

Firstly, if this didn’t go their way, potentially, their sentencing could’ve been increased to up to 5 years. It was extremely dangerous to go this route.

Secondly, because they had to make the same judge say, “I didn’t know the constitution well enough to catch this error of the law.” The judge basically had to say that he made a mistake regarding the constitution of the country where he’s a judge. Not many judges will do this willingly, right?

They were stuck with Judge Bazile again.

Judge Leon M. Bazile

Bazile^[3] is a very interesting character. He fought for his country as a soldier in World War I. He loved opera and classical music and almost never missed the Saturday afternoon radio broadcasts of performances at the Metropolitan Opera of New York. He was a devout Roman Catholic, but against the extreme taboos of his time, he married a Baptist woman he loved. Society disliked their marriage across religious groups, but he went through with the marriage anyway because he loved his wife and somehow their religious differences didn’t matter.

In a letter Bazile wrote to his soon-to-be wife, Virginia Hamilton Bowcock, dated January 25, 1918^[4], the day before their wedding, we can read the following lines:

Clearly, Bazile was a romantic man, right?

I mean, he’s crossing religious taboos just to marry a woman he loves and making in-depth deals with her regarding how they’ll settle their differences.

His relatives and members of his society would’ve been making fun of him in the backrooms. He was possibly breaking some religious rules too. But he didn’t care, right?

Wait a minute… but…

How’s that any different from the Lovings? Some people would say religious taboos are bigger than racial taboos. Right?

To Bazile, crossing the religious taboo of marrying outside your religious group was alright, but marrying outside your race was not alright.

In 1965, when the Lovings, Cohen, and Hirschkop took their motion (to vacate) to Judge Bazile, he refused it. He didn’t think the interracial marriage was bad or violating the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution. He reaffirmed his conviction of the Lovings and wrote an official written opinion on it. The exact quote Judge Bazile wrote in defense of the laws banning interracial marriage was:

"Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents... The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix" — Caroline County Circuit Court’s Judge Leon M. Bazile on January 6, 1959.

They came from a man who challenged religious taboos for the sake of romance when it came to his marriage. In 1918, he married his wife, who was of a different religious group, and love prevailed. In 1959, from the pen of the same man, racism prevailed. Why?

Here’s what we do know:

In Virginia during the 1930s-1940s, political appointments and elections were dominated by white Southern Democrats who supported segregation. While there’s no evidence of this, there’s a strong probability that Bazile owed his power and position (his judgeship) to white-supremacists and groups that supported segregation. The political threads that pulled on him disallowed him to rule in favor of the Lovings, even against the US Constitution, or maybe he was just a hypocrite when it came to matters of love and marriage.

One way or another, the Lovings' conviction was not because there was any scientific argument to prevent interracial marriages. It was because of the racial segregation ideology.

Bazile was a known white supremacist and a supporter of legal segregation. When Judge Bazile made his “God separated races” argument, it showed a clear influence of his racist ideology playing a part in the Lovings' sentencing.

His “God separated” quote also showed remarkable ignorance of science and reason—which holds a lot of sway in courts.

Here’s the scientific issue in Bazile’s argument:

Also, historically, marrying out of your tribe was considered a major taboo. Even in Bazile’s time, it was a big taboo to marry outside your religious tribe. If marriage taboos were that bad in 1918, imagine how bad they were historically. You can say that because marrying out of your tribe was a major taboo, different races were formed because of it.

Now Bazile wants to reverse the facts timeline.

All of these facts, the purposeful 2 AM raid, the law making interracial marriages illegal, and Judge Bazile’s racist quote, are all because of a racist ideology influencing all these people. Then, the consequences of that rule would’ve been used to verify the validity of that rule.

For example, the only reason why Richard and Mildred were criminals was because of that racist law banning interracial marriage. After their conviction, they would have had a hard time getting jobs, loans, traveling documents, etc., and this would’ve brought more and more problems into their lives. In the end, society would say, “Mixed-race marriages are inherently unsustainable," reversing the facts.

Once Bazile denied their motion, Cohen and Hirschkop took the court to the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals and got no result there either. After all, it was heard by 3 extremely conservative judges. It was a lost battle to begin with.

Let’s do a revision now. The Lovings were married in D.C., where it was legal. They were arrested, harassed, detained, harassed some more, and threatened to prevent bail. Heck, Mildred was even threatened in her cell by the sheriff in unspeakable manners. Then a judge, who himself married outside of his religious tribe, opposing a great taboo of his time, considered their marriage invalid because of the interracial marriage taboo—setting a new height of hypocrisy. Then the highest court of Virginia denied their motion too. All fueled by an ideology that the cops and judges held privately but technically had no place in law.

Path to the Supreme Court

In 1967, Cohen and Hirschkop took the case to the United States Supreme Court. The highest court in the entire country. After hearing their case, the court ruled in their favor. It was a 9-0 rule. Every single judge, a total of 9, ruled in their favor to change the law in every state.

With one stroke of a pen, Chief Justice Earl Warren killed the racist laws opposing interracial marriage all over the country under the 14th Amendment (equality). In 16 states, where it was illegal for two people from different races to fall in love, the law was changed in an instant.

I would say that "justice" triumphed—but I’ve heard way too many criminals say that. Justice is a relative term. A murder can justify murder given the chance.

So let me say "love" triumphed.

Love is not subjective.

Ask anyone what love means…

They’ll give you the same answer.

Now, you may be asking why they didn’t go to the US Supreme Court first instead of wasting their time with racist judges. The answer is that they couldn’t. That’s not how courts work. You cannot go straight to someone who’ll give you justice. The system demands that you put on a show for the people at the expense of your own lives, reputation, and safety. Otherwise, the influential groups in power may get upset.

Even if you know that the judges in lower courts are racist, you cannot skip to the higher courts without taking the case to lower courts first.

Also, the battle in the US Supreme Court wasn’t easy either…

It required a lot of pieces of the puzzle to come together.

To understand the big picture in a way that benefits you personally and commercially, you need to understand the calculus of society, war, and theater.

The Lovings didn’t win the US Supreme Court verdict because of justice. They won it because of political trends. By the time it reached the US Supreme Court, it was not about them anymore. Justice didn’t happen overnight for the Lovings. It was in motion since before they were even born. Since before they even met. Their fate was sealed. It was as certain as the physical laws of entropy. If it were not the Lovings, it would’ve been someone else. But sooner or later, the US Supreme Court would overthrow the tyrannical laws banning interracial marriage. The Lovings case was just an excuse. If not, they would’ve found another excuse to fix the screwed system. In this section, we’ll learn how and why all of this was the way it was.

The Civil War Roots

The truth is that lobbyists, activists, great lawyers, and civil rights organizations like the ACLU actively search for plaintiffs they can use to make their point in front of the world. The reason why Mildred and Richard were such great plaintiffs was because up until their arrest for interracial marriage they had a spotless record. They were ideal citizens. They have no prior criminal convictions. They were highly devoted to each other and resistant to what society was thinking about them.

If Richard or Mildred were immigrants, had past convictions for a small robbery, etc., they would’ve been tainted as plaintiffs. The public would not see two people fighting for love; they’d see two people who have a pattern of breaking the law. If they were just an unmarried couple, at that point in time, it would’ve been considered bad for their public image. If they were to break up or get divorced or separated at any time during the lawsuits, it would make them look bad. If, after watching one bad comment on TV about them or their kids, they would’ve told their lawyers to retract their appeals, their case would’ve been dead, and any similar case that came afterwards would’ve been weakened too. They needed to be the perfect plaintiff to make justice happen. They needed the charisma of a movie star and the resilience of a soldier.

Another piece of the puzzle was the US Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren. Widely considered one of the most progressive chief justices in US history. Originally appointed by President Eisenhower, Warren surprised everyone, including the president who appointed him, with his progressive stance and opinions.

Lobbyists and great lawyers obsessively read and analyze the opinions of these judges like they’re reading a magic ball that tells the future.

Imagine the following…

On one hand, those ACLU attorneys saw the letter from Mildred.

On the other hand, they saw all the extremely progressive opinions that Warren wrote on his past cases.

They instantly knew that if that case went in front of Warren, he'd kill the interracial marriage ban immediately. All they had to do was to get in front of Warren.

Most probably, ACLU guys were already looking for perfect plaintiffs like Richard and Mildred, who were perfect enough so that society and the media wouldn’t be able to discourage them into legal quietness.

They were likely already reading all of Warren's opinions and knew that Judge Warren was the guy who would finally end the tyrannical regime of the interracial marriage ban.

When the Lovings' case came to the US Supreme Court, Warren persuaded his fellow judges to ensure that they get a 9-0 unanimous decision from all judges. This was very important because a 5-4 split decision wouldn't be seen as constitutional; it would be seen as political. It’ll provoke resentment in any states that don’t want to kill these outdated laws.

As you can see, Warren’s appointment as the US Supreme Court’s Chief Justice was essential for the Lovings' victory. But Warren was appointed years earlier.

The appointment of a US Supreme Court Chief Justice has nothing to do with two small-town people falling in love. Right?

The threads of macro-influence feel like pure fate in hindsight, as you’ll soon see. The case of Lovings was not about love. It was about the Civil War.

The American Civil War (1861–1865) was a great war fought between the southern states and the northern states. It started on April 15, 1861, and ended on April 9, 1865.

The war was fought on the topic of abolishing slavery.

When Abraham Lincoln was elected president at that time, he won the presidential election without the support of any Southern states.

The southern states saw this as the first domino into their weakening power and decided to break away from the north and form their own country. They named it the Confederate States of America and sought independence. This is how the Civil War started between the South (Confederates) and the North (Union).

Lincoln realized that the war could not be won until all slavery was abolished because slavery was actively supporting the war efforts of the southern states. Every slave was forced to work to support the economy of the southern states in rebellion.

But Lincoln realized that if he frees all slaves, he’ll get hundreds of thousands of new soldiers for his union army. So at the start of the year 1863, he signed a presidential decree called the Emancipation Proclamation, which basically said, If you’re a slave in a rebelling state, you’re free now.

It did not free any slaves in states that were loyal to the Union, including Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri. In fact, since Lincoln had no power in the rebelling states, it did not really free anyone.

At first, it was purely a branding move.

However, as the Union Army marched south, to every plantation and every place they reached where slaves existed, they were freed and asked to join the Union Army.

By the time it took full effect, nearly 200,000 additional colored soldiers joined the Union army and navy. It gave the Union army a numbers advantage in war.

After the Emancipation Proclamation, another move was made by Lincoln. He persuaded Congress to pass the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution^[7].

This document officially abolished slavery forever.

However, again, since Lincoln could not enforce it in the rebelling states, it really didn’t do anything short-term. Long-term, it did abolish slavery, but first they had to win the war, right?

Gettysburg & Reconstruction

The Civil War led to a massive ~1.5 million casualties, killing up to 750,000 people and wounding ~471,000. Disease alone killed two men for every one soldier who died from battle wounds.

In the middle of 1863, a gruesome battle was fraught between the Union and the Confederate armies. After the battle ended, due to a lack of resources and the immense heat, dead soldiers were buried in make-shift graves. To give the Union soldiers a proper burial, at the end of that year, on November 19, 1863, a burial ceremony was held at the same battlefield. On that day, Lincoln inspired the entire nation with his speech, The Gettysburg Address^[8].

This speech inspired Americans for years to come. It also inspired freedom everywhere in the world. It was highly powerful, emotional, crowd-moving, and, most importantly, it rebranded the entire war from the self-preservation agenda of the Union to the themes of equality and unfairness.

The civil war was a true horror, but it gave the United States of America a complete rebirth as the land of the free. However, what does all of this have to do with the Lovings' case or Warren’s court? The answer is everything.

You say that, while they say that the civil war ended in 1865, only the battles ended. But the hate and aggression still plagued the American government for decades. The southern states kept fighting any civil rights agendas. The fight went from the battlefield to the courts and politics.

First, they abused the 13th Amendment. Since the amendment allowed the slavery of criminals, the old Confederate states started making laws targeting colored people more. Arresting them for crimes, then enslaving them as prisoners. For the next 80 years, the southern states would go on to use this amendment to defend themselves, while it was created to defend the enslaved people.

One wrong word and evil gets its way.

It was criminalized for an African-American man to not have a job with a white employer. It became a crime to speak too loudly in the presence of a white woman. Walking on grass was criminalized for this racial group. Tonnes of these weird laws were made. They all sound extremely absurd now, right? Right?

However, since colored people were not considered people but a commodity to make money from, the laws made for them sounded like something you’d hear on Wall Street. Complex, absurd, and opening doors for criminal abuse.

If a colored person could not pay the fine associated with their crime — which most could not because they were only recently freed and had no money — the courts would sell their labor to employers like coal mines, railroads, and turpentine farms to recover the fine owed to them. Since the employers technically didn’t own any slaves, they weren’t breaking the 13th Amendment anymore.

They now called it “convict leasing."

How Wall Street of them… right?

These courts were very enterprising.

To a man who went from working on a plantation as a slave to working on a plantation as a court-forced employee/prisoner, I don't think there was much of a difference.

Notice that in some years, the mortality rate in these convict camps was as high as 40%. That’s nearly half of the people dying. I don’t know what to even say about this crap.

These people also used debt slavery. They gave these newly freed families loans and then held them over their heads to extract unfair value out of them. This tactic is as old as time, and I have a hard time believing that the people of that time didn’t see any of it coming. After all, these were smart people, right?

After thoroughly abusing the 13th Amendment (abolishing slavery), they went to racial segregation and enacted the Jim Crow laws, which basically said, “Colored and white people must sit separately. Everywhere!”

As long as the colored people were legally separated from the white people, the South still felt like it had influence. Even though they lost the war, they didn’t stop fighting for their influence.

Plessy, Pace & The Perfect Plaintiff

Let’s look into the Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) case.

In 1891, the Southern civil rights activists wanted to challenge Louisiana’s (a former Confederate state) Separate Car Act of 1890.

The law basically said colored people cannot sit in the same place as white people in a car. This is clearly unconstitutional, going against the 14th Amendment (equality) under which our friends, the Lovings, won, right? Well, the things are a little more open to interpretation, as you’ll soon see.

Southern Civil Rights activists found a volunteer named Homer Plessy, who was a white-looking volunteer but was actually of 1/8 Black descent. He looked white but was legally colored.

They asked him to break the law on purpose by buying a first-class ticket on the East Louisiana Railroad and taking a seat in a car reserved for whites only. He did it. He broke the law on purpose so he could get arrested, and they can challenge the unfair law as unconstitutional.

He lost…

Every court he took his case to denied him a win.

Even when he took his case to the US Supreme Court, they said that since both racial groups are getting equal seating, it’s equality, even if it’s separate.

“Separate but equal” is technically equal. Right?

See the hypocrisy that festers in systems like these? In 1965, the same court, led by Warren, declared that the interracial marriage ban was unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment. But in 1891, under the same 14th Amendment, the racial segregation laws were protected by law.

But I’m not telling you about this case just to laugh at the system’s hypocrisy. Ask yourself this: why did he break the law purposefully? If the Southern civil rights activists wanted to challenge the law, why did they make him break the law in the first place?

The answer… it’s because he was the perfect plaintiff.

He was a white-looking man who was legally considered colored. He was a model citizen. A shoemaker—a respectable profession. He was educated and spoke well enough to be part of such a landmark case. He understood the stakes.

If we have to put on a show, might as well hire the best actors for it, right? The same principle is applied to lawsuits that challenge the law based on its constitutional validity. The plaintiff must be perfect.

Previously, in the case Pace v. Alabama (1883), the plaintiff was a major weak point. Tony Pace and Mary Cox were an unmarried interracial couple who were arrested for “adultery and fornication” in Alabama. Since they were unmarried, and it was a major taboo at that time, their entire case was socially and politically weak.

If both Tony and Mary were of the same racial background (both white or both Black), they would have paid a $100 fine or up to 6 months in prison. Since they were interracial, they were sentenced to 2 years in jail and could’ve been jailed for up to 7 years.

They too argued that under the 14th Amendment, the law was unconstitutional for arresting them and punishing them unfairly compared to same-race couples.

They were denied by each court they went to until they went to the US Supreme Court. They were denied justice there too. It was much more horrible because when the US Supreme Court asked the Alabama courts why they denied them and why they thought the law was constitutional for them, they used the same “It’s not unconstitutional because we’re punishing both the white people and the colored people equally" argument to defend themselves. It’s the same “separate but equal” argument. In their minds, a crime involving two people of the same race and a crime involving two people of different races are inherently different.

Moreover, Alabama told the US Supreme Court, "Amalgamation of the two races, producing a mongrel population and a degraded civilization, the prevention of which is dictated by a sound public policy affecting the highest interests of society and government," and the US Supreme Court accepted that as a valid reason for the laws' existence.

Their case was argued in front of US Supreme Court Justice Stephen J. Field, who was ironically appointed by Abraham Lincoln and presided as a US Supreme Court justice for 34 years. For all those years, he must’ve seen a ton of cases, and equality never prevailed.

Remember how the Lovings got a 9-0 support… How did every judge in the US Supreme Court support them because of Warren’s political pull? Well, Pace & Mary didn’t get that. They got a 0-9 dissent. Every single judge disagreed with their appeal that the law that punished them was unconstitutional. Every single one.

Chief Justice Earl Warren & School Segregation

This segregation war continued for decades, with the same ideological agenda as the Civil War, until eventually Warren came to court and launched an era of civil rights^[10] and equality.

The case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954) was the first major battle for Warren. It was his first case as the US Supreme Court chief justice. It was a lawsuit saying that segregation in schools was unconstitutional. Warren heard it, gathered support for it, and won with a 9-0 unanimous vote.

Heck, Justice Hugo Black, who also sat as a judge on the case with Warren, also supported it. In his early life, Hugo was a member of the KKK, a white supremacist club founded by ex-Confederate soldiers. But later, Hugo became one of the biggest supporters of equality and Warren.

On one hand, we had Bazile, a judge who disapproved of interracial marriage, a big taboo of that time, but married out of his own religious group, breaking another big taboo of that time.

On the other hand, we have Hugo, a white supremacist turned champion of equality and the 14th Amendment.

People are very interesting, right?

Or should I say politics is full of ironies?

Then Warren went to bat for McLaughlin v. Florida (1964), which was very similar to the previous case of Tony Pace and Mary Cox. Unmarried mixed-race couple living together. Warren hammered it down. Overthrew the previous precedent set by the previous iterations of the US Supreme Court in Pace v. Alabama (1883). Got them a 9-0 unanimous win.

Then Warren got to the Lovings case. Got them their 9-0 unanimous win. By this point, lawyers Cohen and Philip Hirschkop probably knew that getting their case in front of Warren was the most sure way to win, so they just had to push the Lovings case up the appeals chain. Going to Bazile and getting rejected was part of the plan. His “God separated races” opinion was very helpful because it clearly showed racist intent.

It was all part of the show.

Finding the perfect plaintiffs. Challenging laws as unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment. Creating the 14th Amendment so any slavery-like laws can later be denied as unconstitutional under it.

Justice was never a real force. Politics were.

They made the amendment. They decided when a law was valid or invalid under it based on current political trends. It was all their game.

Take another look at the case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954). Warren killed the law of segregation in schools with a 9-0 unanimous win. Against the “separate but equal” argument, he favored the “separation is inherently unequal” argument. “Inherent” is a vague word, but it was Warren’s court. His word was law, literally.

It was like if you went to your daddy and told him, "Hey, Santa didn’t come this year. Why? I’ve been a good kid."

Now, daddy can say literally anything he likes. He can say, "Yes, you did good deeds, but they were inherently bad deeds," and you have no choice but to accept it. What will you do otherwise? You cannot conjure Santa to verify the real reason, so all your reasons lack evidence. Daddy’s house, daddy’s rules.

Also, while Warren killed the segregation in schools law, he didn’t say, “End segregation right now"; instead, he said, “End segregation as soon as possible.”

He softened his wording purposefully.

Why?

Because if he forced it, he knew he risked another southern rebellion, similar to a second civil war. The US Supreme Court has no teeth to enforce the law. Warren would need the military to enforce his decisions, but Warren doesn't have that power. Only the president has that power, and the president was Eisenhower.

Eisenhower was a World War I soldier and a World War II general who just protected the country less than a decade ago and now was serving his first term in office. He already disliked Warren after appointing him Chief Justice in the first place because he turned out to be too progressive for his tastes. He would never use the military for Warren's civil rights crusade.

The southern states were already refusing to comply. More than 100 Southern congressmen signed a document vowing to resist integration by all lawful means. They would close down schools rather than end segregation. In some cases, like Prince Edward County, Virginia, local officials chose to shut down the entire public school system from 1959 to 1964 rather than end segregation. White students attended private academies funded by government tuition grants. Black students were left with no formal education at all. Ultimately, to avoid a second civil war with the South, Warren used soft words.

The result? For well over a decade, more segregation in schools continued.

It was until Alexander v. Holmes County Board of Education (1969), where Justice Hugo Black—a former KKK member, now a champion of equality—pushed the new Chief Justice Warren E. Burger (a different Warren) to end segregation right now, not 10 years later, when segregation in schools really ended.

Chief Justice Earl Warren had to deal with a lot of politics. Even in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954), he had to pull a lot of weight when Thurgood Marshall (the mastermind behind the case) presented the argument that "separate but equal is not equal” because of its psychological effects.

Against the segregation law’s “Separate, but Equal” defense, Marshall cited the psychology study called the “doll test," showing how when white kids were shown both white and colored dolls, they selected white dolls, but when kids of a colored racial background were presented with both white and colored dolls, they too chose the white dolls. This showed that kids of a colored racial background felt that colored people were inferior. A possibility of permanent psychological damage that was not suffered by white kids. Hence, the law promoted inequality in terms of psychological damages.

This social science study was the ammunition Warren needed to tip over half a century of unjust but legal practices. It gave his “inherently unequal” argument the tangible heavy bite it needed.

Another judge would’ve looked at the study and could’ve said, “Look, colored kids also think white is superior.”

It was purely up to Warren to interpret the research as he wanted. The truth is that good people cannot do anything without the influence they need to do it. Justice doesn't happen because it’s right. It happens because of political favor. If Warren were not chief justice, all these puzzle pieces would backfire. The “doll test” study would’ve made racial segregation stronger.

Politics & Prosecutorial Discretion

All of these arguments and interpretations are fueled by the influence that backs them. When the progressives had pull, they won. When the conservatives had pull, they won. That’s the whole truth. I just can’t believe it takes so many pages to make a case for it.

It was all politics.

The Lovings were prosecuted because of Southern politics. Not because of the law. The law was made as a shield for Southern politics. When their case went in front of Judge Bazile, he could’ve said, "This law is unconstitutional," but he didn’t. When the cops arrested them at 2 AM in the middle of the night, they could’ve said, "They're a couple; let’s leave them alone; it’s none of our business. They even have a marriage certificate." They were still arrested, harassed, and threatened because of their ideology and politics.

At the time of writing this book, it is illegal to marry your first cousin in Texas — but it’s legal in many other parts of the world. There are no records of any first-cousin couples being prosecuted in Texas. Tonnes of people who got married to their first cousin in another state or country have lived in Texas without any issues.

Why is it that it’s alright for first-cousin couples to live in Texas without getting prosecuted? — even though the law there says it’s illegal.

It’s all because of prosecutorial discretion and political interests.

Maybe, in 2026, the prosecutors in charge of going after criminals think who sleeps with whom is their private business.

Perhaps the prosecutor thinks it’s not alright to waste taxpayer money and government resources on outdated laws.

Perhaps the prosecutor is smart. They know that if they try to prosecute two people for being in love, the US Supreme Court will kill any law they use under the 14th Amendment like it has done countless times. No political group wants to look like they’re prosecuting two people in love these days. The politics just don't favor it.

If you’re going to take anything away from this section, take this: Stop using the word "justice" because it doesn't mean much. To most people, it means “I got what I want.”

Instead, start understanding the political interests, the enablers, the proxies, etc. who make justice happen despite a skewed system that only wants entertainment.

Do you know when they broke into the Lovings’ home and arrested them? What criminal charge did they say they were arresting them for?

It was for "cohabiting as man and wife, against the peace and dignity of the Commonwealth.”

Right? Well, do you know what “Commonwealth” means? It means, “A political community founded for the common good."

“Common good” is whatever they say it is. It’s all politics and wordplay.