Mingus: Jazz Censorship and the State Action Doctrine

Abstract [En]: The recording history of Charles Mingus’s Fables of Faubus (1959) discloses two constitutional regimes of protection. While federal authority compelled the States to desegregate, the suppression of the same message by a private corporation lay beyond constitutional review under the state action doctrine. The essay compares that asymmetry with the horizontal effect of fundamental rights.

Titolo: Mingus: la censura nel jazz e la dottrina dell’azione dello Stato

Abstract [It]: La vicenda editoriale di Fables of Faubus di Charles Mingus (1959) rivela due regimi costituzionali di tutela. Mentre l’ordinamento federale imponeva agli Stati la desegregazione, la censura del medesimo messaggio da parte di un’impresa privata restava sottratta al sindacato costituzionale per effetto dello state action doctrine. Il saggio compara tale asimmetria con l’efficacia orizzontale dei diritti fondamentali.

Keywords: state action doctrine, Cooper v. Aaron, judicial supremacy, horizontal effect of fundamental rights, private power

Parole chiave: state action doctrine, Cooper v. Aaron, supremazia giudiziaria, efficacia orizzontale dei diritti fondamentali, poteri privati

Table of contents: 1. Methodological premise: the artwork as a reagent of constitutional law. 2. The judicial nullification of Black citizenship. 3. The equalisation strategy and the design of structural litigation. 4. From quantitative disparity to “intangible factors”. 5. The revisionist objection. 6. Brown II and the architecture of massive resistance. 7. The Little Rock crisis. 8. Cooper v. Aaron: judicial supremacy and its doctrinal limits. 9. The private limit: the state action doctrine and its critics. 10. The rise and retreat of the public function exception. 11. Horizontal effect: Lüth, Blinkfüer and the German model. 12. The Italian settlement: Article 2 of the Constitution and the general clauses of private law. 13. The persistence of the asymmetry. 14. Concluding remarks.