Big Fuss at the Art Institute
“Our splendid Art Institute is being desecrated,” said one scribe. “Matisse has examples of the nude that should be turned to the wall,” reported another. “All recognized ideals of human beauty seem to have been willfully abandoned,” a citizen wrote the Tribune. A high school art instructor denounced “these naked pictures, the products of demoralized minds.”
“Question has been raised whether the Art Institute ought to exhibit work of so extreme and radical a character; whether an established art museum ought not to adhere to recognized standards and refuse to exhibit works which at best represent but a small and eccentric group.
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Frank Teague v. Supreme Court
Then things changed. In a historic 1986 decision, Batson v. Kentucky, the Court shifted the burden of proof under the 14th Amendment from the defendant to the prosecutor. Under Batson, it would have been up to Teague’s prosecutor to show that those ten blacks were excluded for some legitimate reason.
Neither Teague nor the Office of the Illinois Attorney General, which was defending Teague’s verdict, had asked the court to clarify or adopt anything of the kind. Retroactivity came in the side door, in a friend-of-the-court brief by the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation of Sacramento, which was unhappy with the stalling tactics of prisoners on death row.
