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Brown V. Board Of Education And The Origins Of The Activist Insecurity In Civil Rights Law, John Valery White

Scholarly Works

The peculiar thing about Brown v. Board of Education is that, when it was decided, liberal legal scholars trashed it. Indeed, the modern conservative movement has built its attack on civil rights initiatives and its critique of the judiciary on the disparaging assessments of the opinion offered by Henry Hart, Hebert Wechsler, and Alexander Bickel. This peculiar aspect of Brown has become the keystone supporting all arguments about what is excessive about the modern jurisprudence; federal courts are said to have a realist disposition producing an unbounded, relativistic, interdisciplinary judicial craft and characterized by an activist proclivity. These dual pillars …

The Brown Symposium – An Introduction, Thomas B. Mcaffee

Scholarly Works

This article is an introduction to a symposium sponsored by Southern Illinois University regarding Brown v. Board of Education.

Brown And The Doctrine Of Precedent: A Concurring Opinion, Thomas B. Mcaffee

Scholarly Works

This article is part of a symposium sponsored by Southern Illinois University regarding Brown v. Board of Education. In this article, the author addresses the question of what opinion he would have written had he been a justice on the U.S. Supreme Court when the case was decided.

The author indicates he would have concurred in those opinions finding a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment in Brown v. Board of Education. The author finds persuasive the argument that any other decision would permit states to evade the core purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment. Nevertheless, …