California Anti-Chinese Legislation and the Federal Courts: A Study in Federal Relations

Abstract

California's anti-Chinese agitation, extending throughout the latter half of the nineteenth century, is familiar to Americans as an example of race conflict and competition in labor economics. Relatively few people know that this agitation was not merely a series of riots, the sand-lot oratory of Dennis Kearney and the Workingmen's Party of California, the reverberations of rival newspapers and political parties, and the evacuating and burning of Chinatowns, but that it found expression in extensive state and municipal legislation. Even fewer, however, are acquainted with the fact that most of these laws and ordinances were carried into the Federal courts, involving a re-examination of the relations of state and national governments. The question of states' rights, of course, is as old as our national existence. Repeatedly, during the first sixty-five years of our national life, this question was the subject of earnest debate and legislative action, and few indeed were the states which did not make some sort of formal protest against what they considered unwarranted encroachment by the national government. The extension of slavery brought this question to the battlefield, where, presumably, it was settled forever. Anyone who is at all familiar with the history of the past seven decades, however, knows how unwarranted this presumption is. The current discussion over the legislation of the New Deal again makes this question one of vital importance. The first legislation in California affecting the Chinese was