ABSTRACT
The legal effort to justify mandatory sterilization was carefully orches - trated. It began with Harry Laughlin’s 200-page report on the “best practical means of cutting off the defective germ plasm in the American population,” released in February of 1914.1 The model law Laughlin would eventually craft and release in 1922 grew directly from this earlier report. Laughlin’s 1922 proposal served as a template for laws enacted in the United States and upheld by the Supreme Court in the landmark case Buck v. Bell in 1927.2 It also provided the foundation for Germany’s early sterilization law enacted in 1933, shortly after Adolph Hitler came to power. In gratitude for his pioneering work, so helpful in guiding Germany’s early efforts, Laughlin was awarded an honorary degree from Heidelberg University in 1936 for his work on “racial cleansing.”3
