(1) Introduction
Before considering the Supreme Court case summaries that follow, it needs to be shown what the economic conditions were around the time that the income tax started in 1913 after the 16th amendment became part of the Constitution. In a June 21, 1913 SATURDAY EVENING POST editorial, George Lorimer pointed out that the average pay for factory workers was around $518/year. He said that a $1000/year income was exceptional among common working folks. The first exemption rate in 1913 for income tax was $4000/year - almost 8 times the earnings of the average worker. In fact, in 1936, less than 3% of the people paid income tax. The income tax was never intended to tax the labor of American workers. The Social Security Act of 1935 changed all of this by using the income tax to tax labor at the rate of 1% starting in 1937. Before Social Security began, labor taxation was foreign to the American system. Social Security was part of the Socialist Party Platform of 1932. It had nothing to do with either the Democratic or Republican party platforms.
In justifying today's child support system, Justice O'Connor, in Rose v. Rose, 481 U.S. 619 (1987), stated that "Our Anglo-American tradition accords a special sanctity to the support obligation," and that the obligation to pay child support is part of "this Nation's common law tradition." She quotes from old Supreme Court cases that were from the turn of the 20th century. The two cases she used as authorities were: Wetmore v. Markoe, 196 U.S. 68, 74 -76 (1904); & Audubon v. Shufeldt, 181 U.S. 575 (1901). We shall see that Justice O'Connor, as well as many other judges at both the federal and state level, are trying to create a legal fiction that applies to working people as well as wealthy people when it comes to child support. We shall see that Justice O'Connor's position that compelling all economic classes of people to support their offspring is a sacred tradition rooted in the common law is a distortion of the truth. Support for children in the older cases was included in alimony. The child support system we have today that operates directly upon the labor of millions of people is a development of recent times. It compliments the gradual process of socialism we have been undergoing since the "New Deal" of the 1930's. In the older cases the statutes did not impose guidelines for child support for judges to follow like they do today. They were at liberty to examine each case and decide for themselves what was fair and equitable.
The case summaries of these Supreme Court decisions are divided into 4 categories: (1) Old Alimony Case Summaries; (2) Child Support Case Summaries; (3) Garnishment Case Summaries; and (4) Involuntary Servitude Case Summaries.
The first cases on alimony were found by searching the findlaw.com database for "alimony" in the Supreme Court decisions. I was only concerned with the cases that were adjudicated before the people's labor became an object of taxation pursuant to the Social Security Act of 1935.
After the case summaries, I have written a work that is entitled "The Development of American National Socialism."