Griswold Scores 'Castes' in U.S.

"Though we have always detected the caste system of India, the fact is that since Emancipation we have clearly maintained a caste system in the United States," Erwin N. Griswold, Dean of the Faculty of Law, said in a book published yesterday by the Harvard University Press.

In the book, entitled Law and Lawyers in the United States: The Common Law Under Stress, Griswold said that the great hopes embodied in the Civil War Amendments to the Constitution "have continuously eluded our grasp."

"We are still dealing with the vestiges of slavery," he added.

"We may be approaching a new recognition of the equal rights before the law of all men, regardless of race," Griswald said. "When we have fully achieved that goal, the United States will have gone far to fulfill its destiny. If we cannot achieve such a state of true legal equality, the United States will no longer deserve a place of leadership among nations. This is truly our testing ground."

Dean Griswold traces the origin of the gap between white and Negro in the United States to the English common law of chattels, which governed the possession of slaves in the American colonies. The law of chattels regarded slaves as no different from any other form of property, having neither personality, nor rights against their owners.

"This legal status was of course degrading in the extreme," Griswold said, "and it had tremendous consequences. Thus, for generations, inferiority was ground into the members of the colored race; and the white race, with varying degrees of compunction and responsibility, accepted a position of superiority.

"It is hardly surprising that it has been extremely difficult for some white persons to accept Negroes as fully equal members of their society, or that Negroes have not always been ready to accept the full measure of responsibility."