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Some Legacies Of Brown V. Board Of Education, Mark V. Tushnet

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The litigation campaign against segregation that culminated in Brown v. Board of Education' remains an important subject of study. Brown continues to be controversial because Americans remain uncertain about what its substantive commitments were, and, perhaps more important, how those commitments, as we now understand them, fit together with the other values and institutions that provide the structure of contemporary politics. This Essay will follow up on three aspects of the litigation campaign preceding Brown in an effort to show how Brown and its legacy illuminate enduring features of the organization of the U.S. political system.

Litigation Campaigns And The Search For Constitutional Rules, Mark V. Tushnet

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This Journal's focus on appellate practice and procedure suggests that it might be appropriate and productive to take a somewhat unusual approach to Brown and its significance. Brown was most important, of course, for its role in the transformation of American race relations. From the point of view of the appellate courts, Brown is significant in another way. Brown was the culmination of a sustained campaign of strategically designed litigation-or so it came to be thought. Lawyers subsequently took the strategic litigation campaign they saw ending in the triumph of Brown as a model for their own causes, and developed …

Procedural Justice, Lawrence B. Solum

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article begins in part I, Introduction, with two observations. First, the function of procedure is to particularize general substantive norms so that they can guide action. Second, the hard problem of procedural justice corresponds to the following question: How can we regard ourselves as obligated by legitimate authority to comply with a judgment that we believe (or even know) to be in error with respect to the substantive merits?

The theory of procedural justice is developed in several stages, beginning with some preliminary questions and problems. The first question--what is procedure?--is the most difficult and requires an extensive …