Buck v. Bell
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Buck v. Bell
U.S. Supreme Court
274 U.S. 200
No. 292
Argued April 22, 1927
Decided May 2, 1927The work is a maquete that commemorates the Buck v. Bell U.S. Supreme Court 274 U.S. 200 No. 292 that was argued on April 22, 1927 and was decided on May 2, 1927. Carrie Buck was born Carrie Elizabeth Buck Eagle Detamore in Charlottesville, Virginia U.S. on July 2, 1906 and died on January 28, 1983 in Waynesboro, Virginia. Carrie Buck was the plaintiff in the case of Buck v. Bell (1927), in which the US Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of compulsory eugenic-based sterilization laws. This decision was based on the now discredited pseudoscience of eugenics that was promoted extensively in America by Harry Hamilton Laughlin and Charles Davenport who headed the Eugenic Research Office in Cold Spring Harbour, New York.
In testimony before a circuit court, various experts supported the eugenics-based law, claiming that “feeblemindedness runs in families.” In addition, several health care workers described Buck as “feebleminded” and her infant daughter as being “below average” and “not quite normal.” In 1925 the court found the law constitutional and determined that Buck was a suitable candidate for sterilization, calling her a “potential parent of socially inadequate offspring.” After the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals affirmed the ruling, Buck v. Bell was argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1927.
The court, in an 8–1 decision, upheld the law’s constitutionality. In the majority opinion, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., wrote that “three generations of imbeciles are enough.” Buck was sterilized in 1927, and shortly thereafter she was released from the institution. The Virginia sterilization law was only repealed in 1974.
The maquette is a 3D printed rendering of a dead bonsai tree in a ceramic pot that is placed on a architectural plinth.
For Carrie Buck, not forgotten.
Sculpture by artists Fantich & Young
Size: 35 cm (W) x 62 cm (H) x 16 cm (D)
Year: 2020
Medium: 3D print
Material: PLA