Ethnic Bans Research Articles

A Child's Right to Be Well Born: Venereal Disease and the Eugenic Marriage Laws, 1913-1935.

An extensive literature describes the legal impact of America's eugenics movement, and the laws mandating sterilization, restriction of marriage by race, and ethnic bans on immigration. But little scholarship focuses on the laws adopted in more than 40 states that were commonly referred to as "eugenic marriage laws." Those laws conditioned marriage licenses on medical examinations and were designed to save innocent women from lives of misery, prevent stillbirth or premature death in children, and save future generations from the myriad afflictions that accompanied "venereal infection." Medical journals, legal journals, and every kind of public press outlet explained the "eugenic marriage laws" and the controversies they spawned. They were inextricably bound up in reform movements that attempted to eradicate prostitution, stamp out STIs, and reform America's sexual mores in the first third of the 20th century. This article will explain the pedigree of the eugenic marriage laws, highlight the trajectory of Wisconsin's 1913 eugenic enactment, and explore how the Wisconsin Supreme Court case upholding the law paved the way for the majority of states to regulate marriage on eugenic grounds.

An effective measure of institutional engineering? Ethnic party bans in Africa

Following the introduction of multiparty systems, almost all sub-Saharan countries have introduced wide-ranging measures of party regulation, particularly bans on ethnic or – in more general terms – particularistic parties, in order, it is claimed, to prevent intercommunal conflict and to promote democracy. While this restrictive type of party regulation has become a dominant political feature in Africa, little is known about the efficacy of such measures. This article engages in an analysis of the possible effects on democracy and peace of different types of party regulation and implemented party bans and shows that party bans are apparently less suited to alleviating conflict than has been claimed. It also finds that implemented bans seem to be negatively related to democracy as ethnic bans are frequently abused to suppress the political opposition or to silence ethnic or religious minorities.