On Tuesday, November 13, 2007, the Northeast Ohio Chapter hosted a discussion entitled “Building a Perfect Race: Modern Eugenics and American Law.” The event featured Maxwell J. Mehlman, Arthur E. Petersilge Professor of Law and Director of the Law-Medicine Center at Case Western Reserve University School of Law, and Professor of Bioethics at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine.

One hundred years ago, chapter 215 of the Indiana Acts of 1907, the world's first eugenic law, was enacted by the Indiana legislature. This initiated an era of intense legislative and judicial activity. In 1921, the Supreme Court of Indiana held the 1907 law to be unconstitutional, and courts declared eugenics laws unconstitutional in a number of other states. But following the Supreme Court's decision in Buck v. Bell, the laws were redrafted-Indiana's in 1927-and the revised statutes for the most part were upheld as constitutional.

One hundred years after the first Indiana law, eugenics might be expected to be a thing of the past. Yet practices that might be considered eugenic persist, and there is good reason to expect them to flourish in the near future. In this presentation, Professor Mehlman described the history of eugenics and its treatment by the courts, and discussed modern practices that might be deemed eugenic and their likely fate in the courts.