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The Dixie Cups

The Dixie Cups (formerly known as The Meltones) are an American pop music girl group established in the 1960s. They are best known for a string of hits including their singles "Chapel of Love", "People Say", and "Iko Iko".

Career
The group hit the top of the charts in 1964 with "Chapel of Love," a song that Phil Spector, Jeff Barry, and Ellie Greenwich had originally written for The Ronettes. The trio consisted of sisters Barbara Ann and Rosa Lee Hawkins, plus their cousin Joan Marie Johnson, from New Orleans. They first sang together in grade school. Originally, they were to be called Little Miss and the Muffets, but were named the Dixie Cups just prior to their first release.

In 1963, the trio decided to pursue a professional career in music and began singing locally as the Meltones. Within a year Joe Jones, a successful singer in his own right with the Top Five 1960 single "You Talk Too Much", became their manager. After working with them for five months, Jones took them to New York City, where record producers/songwriters Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller signed them to their new Red Bird Records label.

The Dixie Cups debut single was the release, "Chapel of Love," which became their biggest hit, reaching number one on the Billboard Hot 100 Chart in June 1964. "Chapel of Love" sold over one million copies and was awarded a gold disc. In 1987, the song "Chapel of Love" appeared on the Full Metal Jacket soundtrack and in the 1991 film Father of the Bride. The hit single by The Dixie Cups was ranked No. 279 on Rolling Stone list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. The group also had several other hits, including "People Say" (No. 12, 1964), "You Should Have Seen the Way He Looked at Me" (No. 39, 1964), "Little Bell" (No. 51, 1965), and "Iko Iko" (No. 20, 1965).

"Iko Iko", a New Orleans traditional song, was recorded in 1964; however, it was released as a single early in 1965. Barbara Hawkins had heard her grandmother sing the song, first recorded in 1953 as "Jock-a-Mo" by James "Sugar Boy" Crawford. Barbara Hawkins stated that "We were just clowning around with it during a session using drumsticks on ashtrays. We didn't realize that Jerry and Mike had the tapes running". Leiber and Stoller overdubbed a bassline and percussion, and released it. It was The Dixie Cups' fifth and final hit.

In 1965, the Dixie Cups moved to the ABC-Paramount record label before a recording hiatus in 1966 temporarily halted their careers. In 1974, the Hawkins sisters moved from New York to New Orleans, where they both began successful modelling careers. Barbara Ann and Rosa Lee also worked as makeup artists. Joan Johnson retired from the group, unable to manage the stress of traveling. The Dixie Cups continued to tour as a trio with another New Orleans singer, Beverly Brown, replacing Joan Johnson who became a Jehovah's Witness and left her music career. Brown, who had recorded two solo discs in the early 1960s, stayed as the third member until the early 1980s when she became ill and was replaced by Dale Mickle. The Dixie Cups continue to perform and make personal appearances. The current lineup consists of the Hawkins sisters (until Rosa Lee's death in 2022) along with Athelgra Neville, sister of the singing Neville Brothers.

On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina swept through Louisiana, flooding much of New Orleans and displacing Barbara and Rosa Hawkins, who subsequently relocated to Florida. Joan Johnson relocated to Texas. Two years later, in April 2007, the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame honored The Dixie Cups as inductees for their contributions to Louisiana music.

Joan Marie Johnson died in New Orleans of congestive heart failure on October 3, 2016, at the age of 72. Rosa Lee Hawkins died from surgical complications on January 11, 2022, at the age of 76.

Singles

 * "Chapel of Love" b/w "Ain't That Nice" (1964) Red Bird Records / U.S. Chart (Billboard) No. 1 UK No. 22 Canada RPM No. 1
 * "People Say" b/w "Girls Can Tell" (1964) Red Bird Records/ U.S. Chart (Billboard) No. 12 R&B No. 7 Canada RPM No. 7
 * "You Should Have Seen The Way He Looked at Me" b/w "No True Love" (1964) Red Bird Records/ U.S. Chart (Billboard) No. 39 Canada RPM No. 20
 * "Little Bell" b/w "Another Boy Like Mine" (1964) Red Bird Records/ U.S. Chart (Billboard) No. 51 R&B No. 21
 * "Iko Iko" b/w "I'm Gonna Get You Yet" (1965) Red Bird Records/ U.S. Chart (Billboard) No. 20 R&B No. 20 UK No. 23 Canada RPM No. 26
 * "Iko Iko" b/w "Gee Baby Gee" (1965) Red Bird Records/ U.S. Chart (Billboard) No. 20
 * "Gee The Moon Is Shining Bright" b/w "I'm Gonna Get You Yet" (1965) Red Bird Records/ U.S. Billboard No. 102
 * "Two-Way-Poc-A-Way" b/w "That's Where It's At" (1965) ABC-Paramount Records /Written by Harold Fedison
 * "What Goes Up Must Come Down" b/w "I'm Not The Kind Of Girl (To Marry)" (1965) ABC-Paramount Records
 * "A-B-C Song" b/w "That's What The Kids Said" (1965) ABC-Paramount Records
 * "Love Ain't So Bad (After All)" b/w "Daddy Said No" (1966) ABC Records

Albums

 * Chapel of Love (1964) Red Bird Records/ Billboard 200 No. 112
 * Iko Iko (1965) Red Bird Records (re-packaged album that is the same as their debut with a different album cover under the title Iko Iko)
 * Riding High (1965) ABC-Paramount Records
 * Doing It Our Way (2011) Iri Records

Compilations

 * Teen Anguish Volume One (1979) Charly Records
 * The Best of the Dixie Cups (1985) Back-Trac Records
 * The Dixie Cups Meet The Shangri-Las (1986) Charly Records
 * The Very Best of the Dixie Cups: Chapel Of Love (1998) Collectables Records
 * The Complete Red Bird Recordings (2002) Varèse Sarabande Records

Original group members

 * Barbara Ann Hawkins (born October 23, 1943)
 * Joan Marie Johnson (January 15, 1944 – October 2, 2016)
 * Rosa Lee Hawkins (October 23, 1945 – January 11, 2022)

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: The Dixie Cups


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Indeterminacy debate in legal theory

The indeterminacy debate in legal theory can be summed up as follows: Can the law constrain the results reached by adjudicators in legal disputes? Some members of the critical legal studies movement — primarily legal academics in the United States — argued that the answer to this question is "no." Another way to state this position is to suggest that disputes cannot be resolved with clear answers, and thus there is at least some amount of uncertainty in legal reasoning and its application to disputes. A given body of legal doctrine is said to be "indeterminate" by demonstrating that every legal rule in that body of legal doctrine is opposed by a counterrule that can be used in a process of legal reasoning.

The indeterminacy thesis emerged as a left reply to Ronald Dworkin's "right answer" thesis. In its strongest form it is an extreme version of legal realism. It argues that nothing is law until it has been promulgated by an official - either a judge or the legislature. For example, a statute that says "No person may smoke in a hospital" does not mean that "John Doe may not smoke in a hospital"; the second statement is the law only if a legitimate authority declares so.

This is because one cannot describe a legal statement as right or wrong without making a normative value judgment about what the law should be.

In the 1990s the indeterminacy thesis came under heavy attack by liberal and conservative defenders of the rule of law, and the debate, though its mantle is in the process of being taken up by a new generation of scholars, has left the intellectual spotlight for the time being.

The thesis can be criticised because the concept of legal mistake is recognised in a determinative theory of law. While such a mistake necessarily involves a normative judgment, it is not truly subjective. A positivist Hartian theory contends that this judgment is conventionally objective, because the rule of recognition fails to recognise the mistake as legally valid. According to a liberal theory such as Dworkin's, the normativity of the judgment is one of reason rather than of value.

title: Indeterminacy debate in legal theory


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Critical legal studies

Critical legal studies (CLS) is a school of critical theory that developed in the United States during the 1970s. CLS adherents claim that laws are devised to maintain the status quo of society and thereby codify its biases against marginalized groups.

Despite wide variation in the opinions of critical legal scholars around the world, there is general consensus regarding the key goals of critical legal studies: The abbreviations "CLS" and "Crit" are sometimes used to refer to the movement and its adherents.
 * to demonstrate the ambiguity and possible preferential outcomes of supposedly impartial and rigid legal doctrines.
 * to publicize historical, social, economic and psychological results of legal decisions
 * to demystify legal analysis and legal culture in order to impose transparency on legal processes so that they earn the general support of socially responsible citizens

Influence
Considered "the first movement in legal theory and legal scholarship in the United States to have espoused a committed Left political stance and perspective", critical legal studies was committed to shaping society based on a vision of human personality devoid of the hidden interests and class domination that CLS scholars argued are at the root of liberal legal institutions in the West. According to CLS scholars Duncan Kennedy and Karl Klare, critical legal studies was "concerned with the relationship of legal scholarship and practice to the struggle to create a more humane, egalitarian, and democratic society."

During its period of peak influence, the critical legal studies movement caused considerable controversy within the legal academy. Members such as Roberto Mangabeira Unger have sought to rebuild these institutions as an expression of human coexistence and not just a provisional truce in a brutal struggle and were seen as the most powerful voices and the only way forward for the movement. Unger and other members of the movement continue to try to develop it in new directions, e.g., to make legal analysis the basis of developing institutional alternatives.

History
Although the intellectual origins of the critical legal studies (CLS) can be generally traced to American legal realism, as a distinct scholarly movement CLS fully emerged only in the late 1970s. Many first-wave American CLS scholars entered legal education, having been profoundly influenced by the experiences of the civil rights movement, women's rights movement, and the anti-war movement of the 1960s and 1970s. What started off as a critical stance towards American domestic politics eventually translated into a critical stance towards the dominant legal ideology of modern Western society. Drawing on both domestic theory and the work of European social theorists, the "crits" sought to demystify what they saw as the numerous myths at the heart of mainstream legal thought and practice. The "crits" include Duncan Kennedy, Roberto Unger, Morton Horwitz, Mark Kelman, and Catharine MacKinnon.

The British critical legal studies movement started roughly at a similar time as its American counterpart. However, it centered around a number of conferences held annually, particularly the Critical Legal Conference and the National Critical Lawyers Group. There remain a number of fault lines in the community; between theory and practice, between those who look to Marxism and those who worked on Deconstruction, between those who look to explicitly political engagements and those who work in aesthetics and ethics. In France, where the legal tradition had been closely guarded by law faculties and watched over by Napoleonic institutions such as the Court of Cassation, the Conseil d'Etat, and the Ecole Nationale de la Magistrature, famed sociologist Pierre Bourdieu caused an uproar when he released his "La Force de la loi, élements pour une sociologie du champ juridique" in 1986 - translated as "The Force of Law: Toward a Sociology of the Juridical Field", in the Hastings Law Journal (1987). It heralded the beginning of continental Critical Legal Studies.

Relation to American legal realism
Critical legal studies had its intellectual origins in the American legal realist movement in the 1930s. Prior to the 1930s, American jurisprudence had been dominated by a formalist account of how courts decide cases, an account which held that judges decide cases on the basis of distinctly legal rules and reasons that justify a unique result. The legal realists argued that statutory and case law is indeterminate, and that appellate courts decide cases not based upon law, but upon what they deem fair in light of the facts of a case. Considered "the most important jurisprudential movement of the 20th century", American legal realism sent a shock through American legal scholarship by undermining the formalist tenets that were long considered a bedrock of jurisprudence.

The influence of legal realism unsettled American jurisprudence for decades. Alan Hunt writes that the period "between the realism of the 1930s and the emergence of critical legal studies in the late 1970s has been a series of unsuccessful attempts to recover from the shock of realism some basis for a legal theory which articulates an image of the objectivity of the legal process, even though the explanation offered by post-realism had to be more complex than that provided by a doctrine of rule-following."

As a literature and a network
The critical legal studies movement emerged in the mid-1970s as a network of leftist law professors in the United States who developed the realist indeterminacy thesis in the service of leftist ideals. According to Roberto Unger, the movement "continued as an organized force only until the late 1980s. Its life as a movement lasted for barely more than a decade."

Duncan Kennedy, a Harvard law professor who along with Unger, was one of the key figures in the movement, has said that, in the early days of critical legal studies, "just about everyone in the network was a white male with some interest in 60s style radical politics or radical sentiment of one kind or another. Some came from Marxist backgrounds — some came from democratic reform." Kennedy has emphasized the twofold nature of critical legal studies, as both a network of leftist scholar/activists and a scholarly literature:

"[C]ritical legal studies has two aspects. It’s a scholarly literature and it has also been a network of people who were thinking of themselves as activists in law school politics. Initially, the scholarly literature was produced by the same people who were doing law school activism. Critical legal studies is not a theory. It’s basically this literature produced by this network of people. I think you can identify some themes of the literature, themes that have changed over time."

Scholars affiliated with critical legal studies often identified with the movement in several ways: by including in their articles an opening footnote mentioning the Conference on Critical Legal Studies and providing the organization's contact information, by attending conferences of the CCLS, and by citing the work of fellow critical legal studies scholars. A 1984 bibliography of CLS works, compiled by Duncan Kennedy and Karl Klare and published in the Yale Law Journal, included dozens of authors and hundreds of works.

A 2011 collection of four volumes edited by Costas Douzinas and Colin Perrin, with the assistance of J-M Barreto, compiles the work of the British Critical Legal Studies, including their philosophical mentors. It showcases scholarship elaborated since its origins in the late 1980s in areas such as legal philosophy, literature, psychoanalysis, aesthetics, feminism, gender, sexuality, post-colonialism, race, ethics, politics and human rights.

Prominent participants in the CLS movement include Derrick Bell, Drucilla Cornell, Mary Joe Frug, Mark Kelman, Alan Hunt, Catharine MacKinnon, Paul O'Connell, Peter Fitzpatrick, Morton Horwitz, Jack Balkin, Costas Douzinas, Karl Klare, Peter Gabel, Roberto Unger, Renata Salecl, Mark Tushnet, Louis Michael Seidman, John Strawson and Martha Fineman.

Intellectual and political context
Roberto Unger, a key member of critical legal studies whose influence had continued to be far-reaching in the decades following the movement's decline, has written that the founders of critical legal studies "never meant it to become an ongoing school of thought or genre of writing. They wanted to intervene in a particular circumstance ..."

That circumstance was the dominant practice of legal analysis which Unger calls the "method of reasoned elaboration". A close descendant of nineteenth-century doctrinal formalism, which sought through legal analysis to identify the "inbuilt legal content of a ... free society", the method of reasoned elaboration treated law materials as containing an "ideal element", an inherent legal substance underlying the contradictions and ambiguities in the law's text. Under the practice of reasoned elaboration, this inherent legal substance forms a prescriptive system that judges gradually uncover by reasoning through the policies and principles of law without questioning the "basic institutional arrangements of the market economy, of democratic politics, and of civil society outside the market and the state".

Reasoned elaboration was a pernicious influence for several reasons, Unger and others argued: it de-emphasized the contingent nature of law as a product of deals and compromise, instead treating it as containing a coherent prescriptive system that needed simply to be uncovered by legal interpretation; it obscured how judges usurp authority by denying their own role in making law; and finally, reasoned elaboration inhibited the use of law as a mechanism of social change.

In addition to the context of legal interpretation, critical legal studies also emerged in response to its political context, namely a setting in which the social-democratic settlement that was finalized after World War II had become canonical, and active dispute over the organization of society severely declined, effectively enshrining a reigning consensus about social organization that Unger describes as including a "combination of neoliberal orthodoxy, state capitalism, and compensatory redistribution by tax and transfer." Critical legal scholars challenged that consensus and sought to use legal theory as a means to explore alternative forms of social and political organization.

In accordance with the Critical rationalism the German jurist Reinhold Zippelius uses Popper's method of "trial and error" in his 'Legal Philosophy'.

Themes
Although the CLS (like most schools and movements) has not produced a single, monolithic body of thought, several common themes can be generally traced in its adherents' works. These include:
 * A first theme is that contrary to the common perception, legal materials (such as statutes and case law) do not completely determine the outcome of legal disputes, or, to put it differently, the law may well impose many significant constraints on the adjudicators in the form of substantive rules, but, in the final analysis, this may often not be enough to bind them to come to a particular decision in a given particular case. Quite predictably, once made, this claim has triggered many lively debates among jurists and legal philosophers, some of which continue to this day (see further indeterminacy debate in legal theory).
 * Secondly, there is the idea that all "law is politics". This means that legal decisions are a form of political decision, but not that it is impossible to tell judicial and legislative acts apart. Rather, CLS have argued that while the form may differ, both are based around the construction and maintenance of a form of social space. The argument takes aim at the positivist idea that law and politics can be entirely separated from one another. A more nuanced view has emerged more recently. This rejects the reductivism of 'all law is politics' and instead asserts that the two disciplines are mutually intertwined. There is no 'pure' law or politics, but rather the two forms work together and constantly shift between the two linguistic registers.
 * A third strand of the traditional CLS school is that far more often than is usually suspected the law tends to serve the interests of the wealthy and the powerful by protecting them against the demands of the poor and the subaltern (women, ethnic minorities, the working class, indigenous peoples, the disabled, homosexuals, etc.) for greater justice. This claim is often coupled with the legal realist argument that what the law says it does and what it actually tends to do are two different things. Many laws claim to have the aim of protecting the interests of the poor and the subaltern. In reality, they often serve the interests of the power elites. This, however, does not have to be the case, claim the CLS scholars. There is nothing intrinsic to the idea of law that should make it into a vehicle of social injustice. It is just that the scale of the reform that needs to be undertaken to realize this objective is significantly greater than the mainstream legal discourse is ready to acknowledge.
 * Furthermore, CLS at times claims that legal materials are inherently contradictory, i.e. the structure of the positive legal order is based on a series of binary oppositions such as, for instance, the opposition between individualism and altruism or formal realizability (i.e. preference for strict rules) and equitable flexibility (i.e. preference for broad standards).
 * Finally, CLS questions law's central assumptions, one of which is the Kantian notion of the autonomous individual. The law often treats individual petitioners as having full agency vis-à-vis their opponents. They are able to make decisions based on reason that is detached from political, social, or economic constraints. CLS holds that individuals are tied to their communities, socio-economic class, gender, race, and other conditions of life such that they cease to be autonomous actors in the Kantian mode. Rather, their circumstances determine and therefore limit the choices presented to them. People are not "free"; they are instead determined in large part by social and political structures that surround them.

Increasingly, however, the traditional themes are being superseded by broader and more radical critical insights. Interventions in intellectual property law, human rights, jurisprudence, criminal law, property law, international law, etc., have proved crucial to the development of those discourses. Equally, CLS has introduced new frameworks to the legal field, such as postmodernism, queer theory, literary approaches to law, psychoanalysis, law and aesthetics, and post-colonialism.

Continued influence
Critical legal studies continues as a diverse collection of schools of thought and social movements. The CLS community is an extremely broad group with clusters of critical theorists at law schools and socio-legal studies departments such as Harvard Law School, Georgetown University Law Center, Northeastern University, University at Buffalo, Chicago-Kent College of Law, Birkbeck, University of London, University of New South Wales, University of Melbourne, University of Kent, Carleton University, Keele University, the University of Glasgow, the University of East London among others.

In the American legal academy its influence and prominence seems to have waned in recent years. However, offshoots of CLS, including critical race theory continue to grow in popularity. Associated schools of thought, such as fem-crit, contemporary feminist theory and ecofeminism and critical race theory now play a major role in contemporary legal scholarship. An impressive stream of CLS-style writings has also emerged in the last two decades in the areas of international and comparative law.

In addition, CLS has had a practical effect on legal education, as it was the inspiration and focus of Georgetown University Law Center's alternative first year curriculum, (Termed "Curriculum B", known as "Section 3" within the school). In the UK both Kent and Birkbeck have sought to draw critical legal insights into the legal curriculum, including a critical legal theory based LLM at Birkbeck's School of Law. Various research centers and institutions offer CLS-based taught and research courses in a variety of legal fields including human rights, jurisprudence, constitutional theory and criminal justice.

In New Zealand, the University of Otago Legal Issues Centre was established at the university's law faculty in 2007.

Law and Critique is one of the few UK journals that specifically identifies itself with critical legal theory. In America, The Crit and Unbound: Harvard Journal of the Legal Left are the only journals that continue to explicitly position themselves as platforms for critical legal studies. However, other journals such as Law, Culture and the Humanities, the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review, The National Lawyers Guild Review, Social and Legal Studies, and The Australian Feminist Law Journal all published avowedly critical legal research.

Criticism
The stance "law is politics" of Critical legal studies has been criticized for rejecting the distinction between political argument and legal argument. Critical legal studies has been criticized as attacking the rule of law and separation of powers. The indeterminacy thesis stance by Critical legal studies has been criticized to not distinguish between the strong and weak indeterminacy thesis. The strong indeterminancy thesis has been argued by some to be incorrect due to the existence of easy legal cases where some outcomes cannot be legally correct. Constitutionalism argues that the authority of government is limited by constitutional law", in contrast to Critical legal studies, which disputes the constraints by constitution.

title: Critical legal studies


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Squadron Supreme

The Squadron Supreme is a superhero team appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics, of which there are several notable alternate versions. The original team was created by Roy Thomas and John Buscema, derived from the previously created supervillain team Squadron Sinister.

The core members of the Squadron Supreme are Hyperion, Nighthawk, Doctor Spectrum, Power Princess, and the Whizzer, pastiches of prominent members of rival publisher DC Comics' superhero team the Justice League. Many other characters were later added to the roster, not all of which were based on DC heroes.

Publication history
The Squadron Supreme has its roots in the Squadron Sinister, which first appeared in The Avengers #69 as a pastiche of the Justice League. Roy Thomas later introduced a heroic version of the Squadron Sinister named the Squadron Supreme, which first appeared in The Avengers #85–86 (Feb.–March 1971), and which was co-created with John Buscema. The team then had guest appearances on several more occasions, and in 1985 was featured in a self-titled twelve-issue limited series by Mark Gruenwald, followed in 1989 by a graphic novel sequel by Gruenwald, Ryan and inker Al Williamson, Squadron Supreme: Death of a Universe, in which the Nth Man serves as the main antagonist.

In 2003, a reimagined Squadron Supreme appeared in an ongoing series entitled Supreme Power, published under the mature-audience MAX imprint. This version was created by writer J. Michael Straczynski and artist Gary Frank.

Yet another Squadron Supreme was introduced in 2015, written by James Robinson and drawn by Leonard Kirk. Unlike the previous teams, which had appeared in alternate realities, this team was based in Marvel's main "Earth-616" reality, although the team members were from a variety of alternate universes that had been destroyed in the aftermath of the 2015 Secret Wars event.

Another version of the Squadron Supreme, set in the Marvel Universe, was introduced by Jason Aaron in The Avengers vol. 8. The Squadron, created by Mephisto and led by Phil Coulson, acts as the US government's sanctioned superhero team in place of the Avengers. This version of the team is the focus of the Heroes Reborn storyline, where reality is overwritten so that the Avengers were never formed and the Squadron Supreme are Earth's premier superhero team instead.

Earth-712 version
The Squadron Supreme are first encountered by four members of the Avengers – the Vision, Quicksilver, the Scarlet Witch and Goliath – who have arrived in the Earth-712 universe by mistake. The Avengers are initially confused, since several members of the Squadron Supreme have identical names and powers to the Squadron Sinister, a group of previously encountered villains. After a brief battle, the Avengers assist the Squadron Supreme against the global threat posed by the mutant Brain-Child, before returning to their own universe. The Squadron Supreme have another series of skirmishes with the Avengers engineered by the group the Serpent Cartel, but eventually they join forces and prevent the use of the Serpent Crown.

The team features briefly in the title Thor, when the evil version of Hyperion attacks the Earth-712 version and then the Earth-616 Thor. The Squadron appear in the title The Defenders as mind-controlled pawns of the entities the Over-Mind and Null the Living Darkness, but are freed and aid the Defenders in defeating the villains. Earth-712, however, is left in a post-apocalyptic state.

The Squadron Supreme were next featured in a self-titled 12-issue miniseries (Sept. 1985–Aug. 1986) by writer Mark Gruenwald, which picks up from where Earth-712 was last seen in The Defenders #114. The Squadron, led by Hyperion, believe they have the knowledge and power to recreate the world and create a utopia. Nighthawk protests, believing that the Squadron should serve and not rule. The issue is put to a vote, with the so-called "Utopia Program" favored by the majority of the Squadron; Nighthawk, unable to agree with the decision in clear conscience, resigns from the team. The Squadron assume overall control of the government of the United States and remake the nation into a virtual utopia. The team implement a series of sweeping changes, including revealing their secret identities; instituting a program of behavior modification in prisons where inmates are forced to submit to a process that mentally inhibits their criminal instincts; enforcing a strict gun control policy; and developing medical technology to cryogenically preserve the dead, while opposed by the future dictator (and usurper) of mankind Victorex Prime (formerly the Scarlet Centurion), serving as the main antagonist.

Despite the economic and technological advances, there are setbacks: the Golden Archer abuses the behavior modification technology by forcing fellow member Lady Lark to love him, resulting in his eventual removal from the team; the Amphibian becomes increasingly disgusted with the Squadron's methods and abandons the surface world altogether; Nuke inadvertently kills his parents via unnoticed and uncontrollable release of radiation and dies while battling Doctor Spectrum during a rampage; and Tom Thumb discovers he has cancer but chooses not to inform his teammates, eventually succumbing to the disease.

At one point, the team is attacked by the Institute of Evil on the behalf of Victorex Prime. The Squadron ultimately defeats the Institute and uses the behavior modification technology to reform them, adding the former supervillains as members. Three of them die or are incapacitated.

In the meantime, Nighthawk forms a new team he calls the America Redeemers, recruiting former villains and several previously unknown superhumans. The later infiltrate the Squadron and kidnap the surviving Institute members to reverse the behavior modification on them. Despite mixed feelings on the parts of several of the Institute members, they too join the Redeemers. Former Squadron member the Golden Archer (now known as the Black Archer) also joins.

Eventually, the Redeemers confront the Squadron Supreme. A brutal battle ensues in which several members of both teams are killed, including Nighthawk. A horrified Hyperion realizes that Nighthawk was right: the Squadron, despite having good intentions, had inadvertently created a totalitarian state with themselves as its dictators. The Squadron surrenders, disbands and returns control of the United States to the government.

In a graphic novel sequel by Gruenwald, Ryan and inker Al Williamson, Squadron Supreme: Death of a Universe, remnants of the team and their former enemies (including Victorex Prime) reunite to battle the Nth Man. Although they succeed, several members of the Squadron are killed, with the remainder (Hyperion, Doctor Spectrum, the Whizzer, Power Princess, Lady Lark (now known as Skylark), Arcanna, Haywire, and the Shape) marooned in the mainstream Marvel universe.

The Squadron encounter the hero Quasar, and relocate to the government facility Project Pegasus. After another encounter with the Overmind and a visit to the laboratory world of the Stranger, the Squadron attempt unsuccessfully to return to their own universe and members Hyperion, Doctor Spectrum and the Whizzer battle the entity the Deathurge.

The entire Squadron Supreme appear in an Avengers storyline with the Avengers that finally returns them to their home universe. The one-shot issue Squadron Supreme: New World Order reveals that Earth-712 is now dominated by corporations using the Squadron's own utopia technologies.

The Squadron come into conflict with a new government when an interdimensional team called the Exiles, traveling from the Earth-616 universe, reveal that the government had rigged the election through worldwide vote fraud. The Squadron and the Exiles depose the new government and attempt to allow society to progress without superhuman involvement.

Supreme Power
The series Supreme Power features the rebooted version of the superhero team Squadron Supreme and is set on Earth-31916.

Alien Hyperion arrives on Earth as an infant, and is taken into custody by the US government and raised in a controlled environment. Army Corporal Joseph Ledger is given a strange crystal removed from Hyperion's spaceship by the government that bonds to him, causing him to fall into a coma for years.

Discovering Hyperion has superhuman abilities, the government uses him as a secret weapon, and is eventually outed by the media. The government then announces and introduces Hyperion as a state-sponsored hero, which encourages other beings to appear, such as the Blur, who can move at superspeed. Ledger awakens and, harnessing the energy powers of the crystal, becomes Doctor Spectrum. Hyperion and Spectrum are initially hostile to one another and they battle, with Hyperion accessing lost memories when coming in contact with Spectrum's crystal. The Amphibian is seen on dry land for the first time, and Princess Zarda heals Hyperion after his battle. Nighthawk solicits the aid of Hyperion and the Blur to deal with a superpowered serial killer, who Hyperion now knows is actually the product of experimentation with his DNA.

Although successful, Hyperion is outraged by the government exploitation and leaves, warning that he has no wish to be contacted by humankind again. The government gathers the remaining superhumans into a team to capture Hyperion.

The story continues in the limited series Supreme Power: Hyperion with new Squadron members Emil Burbank, Arcanna, the Shape and Nuke tracking Hyperion to what they believe is an alternate reality. In this world, Hyperion and a version of the Squadron rule the world, with only Nighthawk and a small group of superhumans opposing their rule. Although the heroes locate the true Hyperion and convince him to return to their world, Burbank discovers that it was, in fact, not an alternate reality but their world two years from the present time.

Second Squadron Supreme title
The second volume of the series Squadron Supreme brings together all the superhumans (except a reluctant Nighthawk), who are split into two teams – one for international/public missions and another for covert operations. The President of the United States calls the group the Squadron Supreme. The Squadron meets with mixed success: an attempt to kill an African dictator is botched, and the target is murdered by local superhumans who state the group is not welcome in Africa, and a mission to Iran has member Inertia encouraging a victim to fight back and kill.

China recruits Redstone, the superpowered serial killer created from Hyperion's DNA, in a bid to protect itself. The final issue is a battle to the death against Redstone (with the Blur recruiting Nighthawk to assist) who threatens to detonate a nuclear weapon. The outcome is not revealed, as the series concluded with issue #7.

Ultimate Power
An unrelated nine-issue series, Ultimate Power, written by J. Michael Straczynski; Brian Michael Bendis and Jeph Loeb with art by Greg Land, features the Squadron in a crossover into the Ultimate Universe. Courtesy of a deception engineered by Nick Fury and the Ultimate villain Doctor Doom, the Squadron travel to the Ultimate Universe, thinking that the Ultimate Reed Richards is responsible for releasing an organism that has destroyed much of the United States.

A series of misunderstandings ensues, and after a series of battles between the Squadron, the Ultimate Fantastic Four, the Ultimates and the Earth-712 Squadron Supreme (whose world was also affected by the organism), the third culprit is revealed as Burbank, who was asked by the government to develop a weapon to kill Hyperion. Nick Fury is detained in custody in the Earth-31916 universe, while Squadron member Power Princess remains in the Ultimate Universe to ensure that Doom (who escaped custody by using a Doombot) is captured.

Squadron Supreme: Hyperion vs. Nighthawk
An unrelated four-issue limited series, Squadron Supreme: Hyperion vs. Nighthawk, written by Marc Guggenheim and with art by Paul Gulacy, relates how Hyperion and Nighthawk, after an initial skirmish, join forces to try and alleviate the Darfur conflict in war-torn Sudan. Hyperion discovers Nighthawk has a prototype weapon built from stolen plans of Emil Burbank's journal that cannot actually injure him, but can convince him that he is being injured.

Third Squadron Supreme title
A third volume of the title Squadron Supreme, written by Howard Chaykin and with art by Greg Land (and other artists), is published, with the 12-issue series being set five years after the battle with Redstone. Most of the Squadron have disappeared, with Ultimate Nick Fury, Burbank and Arcanna now a team of intelligence officers working for the government and investigating a group of returning astronauts that exhibit strange abilities. The astronauts infect many people they come into contact with, also giving them superhuman abilities.

Fury eventually leads a new version of the Squadron that features characters who are pastiches of long-time Marvel characters. The group eventually come into conflict with many of the original members of the Squadron who have been gathered by Hyperion. The heroes unite to stop a group of superhuman terrorists from the Middle East, but then, via a government device, apparently all lose their abilities. Arcanna secretly reveals to Fury that she, and likely many others, still possesses superhuman abilities. Fury later returns to the Ultimate Universe.

Later appearances
Later, the members of the Squadron Supreme are apparently killed by Namor the Sub-Mariner and the Cabal after the villains raid the Squadron's universe. Versions resembling these characters later appear on the Battleworld created by Doctor Doom during the Secret Wars event, only to be killed again at the hands of the Squadron Sinister. Nighthawk is left as the group's only survivor.

Earth-616 version
This team, set in Marvel's mainstream reality, features characters from numerous alternate universes, such as the Nighthawk from Supreme Power, a Hyperion from a reality that had been destroyed upon colliding with another universe, Doctor Spectrum from the world of the Great Society (which was destroyed by Namor the Sub-Mariner to prevent it from colliding with the mainstream universe), the Blur from the New Universe, and Warrior Woman from a Secret Wars tie-in (posing as the Earth-712 Squadron Supreme's Power Princess).

The Squadron Supreme's first action was to get revenge on Namor for what happened to the worlds of some of its members. They attacked Atlantis where Hyperion beheaded Namor and Zarda killed Attuma. The fight ended with Hyperion lifting Atlantis above the ocean and throwing it onto the ground hard enough to kill the remaining Atlanteans present. The actions caused by the Squadron Supreme led the Avengers Unity Division to apprehend them before anyone else ends up killed by their hand. The Squadron Supreme were saved by Thundra and later teleported to Weirdworld, where they encounter Doctor Druid, who plans to mind-control Weirdworld's inhabitants. The Squadron Supreme shatter the crystal that Druid was using to enhance his mind control powers and return home. Power Princess remains on Weirdworld and reveals herself as Warrior Woman. Thundra sides with the Squadron Supreme, although she is unsure if she should help the Squadron Supreme protect the world or help protect the world from the Squadron Supreme.

Through Modred the Mystic's magical modifications to Reed Richard's time machine, Hyperion and Doctor Spectrum are accidentally transformed into ephemeral "ghosts" caught in the past; specifically during the Squadron's attack on Atlantis and just before Hyperion kills Namor. They decide to change the past by dragging this past Namor back to the present, thereby resurrecting him. Although this action is easy for Hyperion, who has had second thoughts about the cutthroat methods the Squadron Supreme has been using, it is more difficult for Doctor Spectrum, as Namor destroyed her Earth. At the end of the story arc, Hyperion leads the action to disband the Squadron, and the team goes their separate ways.

Squadron Supreme of America
When the Avengers become a global peacekeeping force, Thunderbolt Ross meets with Phil Coulson to discuss the matter. Phil reveals that he has established the Squadron Supreme of America as the newest United States superhero team. The team consists of Hyperion, Power Princess, Nighthawk, the Blur, and Doctor Spectrum as their leader.

With Doctor Spectrum as their leader, the Squadron Supreme of America were first used to fight Namor and his Defenders of the Deep when they attacked a Roxxon oil rig that is off the coast of Alaska.

Then the Squadron Supreme visited another oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico, where Doctor Spectrum used his powers to melt areas of the oil rig to secure it from an attack by Namor. The Squadron Supreme then made short work of Namor and the Defenders of the Deep.

During the War of the Realms storyline, the Squadron Supreme of America were summoned to Washington D.C. by Phil Coulson, who brought them up to speed on Malekith's invasion. They are shown fighting Rock Trolls and Frost Giants. Their origin is fully shown where its members are revealed to be simulacrums created by Mephisto and programmed by the Power Elite so that Phil Coulson can have them be a United States-sponsored superhero team. After the Squadron Supreme caused the Frost Giants to retreat, Phil Coulson sends them to Ohio which has become a battleground.

The Squadron Supreme are summoned to confront Black Panther when he infiltrates the Pentagon and confronts Phil Coulson. Hyperion states that the Squadron Supreme are the United States' sanctioned superhero team in light of the Avengers becoming an anti-American team. As Nighthawk states to Blur that the Black Panther will not run as he is under arrest, the Black Panther states to them that he does not know how they got their powers and that they are not the Squadron Supreme, as he even asked if they trust Phil Coulson. Before they can grab him, the Black Panther contacts Broo to teleport him away. As he disappears, the Black Panther states that Phil Coulson will not answer their questions and that the Avengers are not their enemies unless they force them to be.

During the Heroes Reborn storyline, reality has been somehow changed so that the Squadron Supreme of America are the America's premier superhero team and that the Avengers never existed. The Squadron Supreme are seen fighting the Masters of Doom consisting of Doctor Juggernaut, Black Skull, Silver Witch and All-Gog after their escape from the Negative Zone. The Squadron Supreme manages to repel the Masters of Doom with the fight being witnessed by President Phil Coulson. The Skrullian Skymaster was shown to be a member of this reality's Squadron Supreme before he was killed by Rogue to avenge Mystique's death. Nighthawk and Blur had a Secret Squadron team that consisted of Tom Thumb (who is an amalgam of both versions), Amphibian, Blue Eagle, Golden Archer, and Arcanna Jones. This group fought the Siege Society in London where Amphibian was beheaded by Baron Helmut Zemo, Golden Archer was killed by Hawkeye and Fire-Ant, Tom Thumb was subdued by Hawkeye, Arcanna Jones was killed by Silver Witch, and Golden Eagle was slain offscreen by Black Widow and Hawkeye who escape with Fire Ant using his special wings. Following the fight, Nighthawk, Blur, and Tom Thumb mourn their comrades at their funeral. The Squadron Supreme of America discuss their encounters with various heroes and concerns about their world being wrong. Putting aside their differences and without telling President Coulson, they gather clues and rule out suspects before eventually arriving in Wakanda, where they confront the Avengers. The Avengers battle and eventually defeat the Squadron Supreme of America. After Captain America, Star Brand, and Echo use the Pandemonium Cube to restore the original reality, the Squadron Supreme of America find their memories transferred to their counterparts in the Avengers' reality and struggle to find their place in an unfamiliar world.

Doctor Spectrum led Power Princess and Blur on a mission to arrest Red Widow. In a turn of events, Power Princess killed Doctor Spectrum and took his Power Prism as it is shown that Red Widow is working on brainwashing Hyperion.

Marvel Zombies Supreme
A group of clones of the Squadron Supreme appear in the 2011 Marvel Zombies Supreme miniseries, which sees the members of the team infected with a zombie virus developed by a deranged geneticist.

In other media

 * The Squadron Supreme appears in The Super Hero Squad Show episode "Whom Continuity Would Destroy!", consisting of Nighthawk, Power Princess, and Hyperion.
 * The Squadron Supreme appears in Avengers Assemble, consisting of Hyperion, Zarda, Nighthawk, the Speed Demon, Doctor Spectrum, and Nuke. This version of the group are aliens who ruled over their home planet before destroying it when the populace failed to blindly obey them. In the first season episode "Hyperion", the titular character arrives on Earth and plans to do the same to this world that he had done to his. While he is imprisoned by the Avengers, he later escapes and joins the Red Skull's Cabal until the latter betrays them. In the second season, the Squadron reunite and clash with the Avengers until they use the Reality Stone to make people believe they are heroes and the Avengers are villains. Eventually however, the Squadron are defeated by the Avengers and remanded to the Vault.

title: Squadron Supreme