(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009)
Akin, John Warren
In this paper, an analysis of the records of involuntary sterilizations on black patients in the state of Georgia is performed, to study the intent versus the outcome of the Buck v. Bell decision. An analysis of the legal intent of the opinion's author, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., is also a major component of the paper. The study found that while the intent of the opinion placed it within Constitutional bounds, in implementation it pre-supposed far too high a degree of literacy of the population it was meant to apply to.