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Brown v. Board of Education (1954) stands as a turning point in Supreme Court decision making as it erased segregation in schools and set a new standard for civil rights cases. Using stricter notions of scrutiny the Court was able to revitalize the Fourteenth Amendment. However, while this case set new standards in civil rights, the Court has since had a difficult time defining their role in cases regarding racial discrimination. Washington v. Davis (1976) and Mccleskey v.
Kemp (1987) are two such cases dealing with racial discrimination in which the court has had to deal with conflicting interests of the justices and how they perceive their role in the changing social landscape of the United States since the decision in Brown v. Board. This paper will examine such conflicting interests by examining the majority, concurring, and dissenting opinions of the justices in the aforementioned cases. Additionally this paper will critique the decisions in light of the following: the choice of political institution and rights principles; the use of precedents; their effect of the development of constitutional principles in its doctrinal area; the policy implications of the decisions; the effects of the case on the development of a principled constitutional law; the use of societal facts; and scholars' views on aspects of the cases. The outcome of Brown v.
Board gave the Court an increased role in shaping American society in regards to civil rights issues. Nevertheless the Court continues to struggle with cases dealing with racial equality and the Fourteenth Amendment. As cases have become more complex in terms of racial discrimination the Court has had to adopt guidelines to help ensure consistent and competent judgments in determining their constitutionality. These guidelines, under the guise of strict scrutiny, have continually narrowed the interpretation of the outcomes of Brown and have limited the parameters of the Equal Protection Clause thereby causing continued debate within the Court and in society about racial discrimination.
While many changes in the law that have been reflected by rulings of the Court have been beneficial for society they have not always mirrored public beliefs. By doing so the Court has had the power to direct how people act and behave regardless to their personal beliefs. The ruling in Brown was met with much opposition in Southern states, yet forced society to change even if the change was merely cosmetic. In "Desegregation and the Supreme Court: the Fatal Attraction of Brown, " Donald Lively argues that Brown "demonstrates the risks of recountouring constitutional law in anticipation of significant cultural progress without doctrinal insurance for unexpected consequences" (Lively. Glennon. 466). Central to Lively's arguement is that social beliefs in the South did not correspond to such a landmark decision as in Brown, and that without related decision making by Congress, the Court proved to be shaping American society to its own needs and not that of the public.
Lively continues to argue that because the decision in Brown did not mirror social beliefs that any "meaningful desegregative progress was not realized until after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed and significant leverage became available for the federal government to compel compliance" (Glennon. 465). Through these arguement's we can see how the Court radically attempted to change society rather than interpret existing legislature in order to direct society on its own accord. While Lively's arguement's pose some interesting points, it can be argued that the decision in Brown not only produced radical social change, but also accelerated the promotion of civil rights legislation. Had the Court not made its decision in Brown it could have stunted civil rights and perpetuated existing segregation and racist statutes through the country. However, perhaps the decision in Brown did not create enough of a change to clearly outline racial cases in the future. The Court asks in Brown if the "segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race, even though the physical facilities and other tangible factors may be equal, deprive the children of the minority group of equal educational opportunities, " yet the court does not address and determine factors that are not tangible which could cause the notion of "seperate but equal" to difficult to implement (448).
Even while the case made leaps in civil rights progress, the failure to grasp some of the underlying aspects in the case might have caused the Court to be receptive to controversy and more narrow interpretations of racial discrimination cases. David Strauss' "Discriminatory Intent and the Taming of Brown" argues that Brown failed to address basic rights principles by keeping the door open for continued interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment rather than providing a clear definition for the Court. A central question that Strauss poses that is not adequately covered in Brown is: "what constitutes impermissible discrimination under the Equal Protection Clause" (Strauss. Glennon. 480)? Since Brown the Court has attempted to answer this question with continuing problems and conflicts in the cases of Washington v.
Davis and Mccleskey v. Kemp. Twenty-two years after Brown the court developed an answer to Strauss' question when it applied a narrow standard for discriminatory intent in order to approach cases that dealt with the Equal Protection Clause. Washington v. Davis debated the use of a test that was administered to applicants to the Washington, D. C.
Metropolitan Police Department. The test was argued as discriminatory since more blacks failed to pass the test than whites, and that the material on the test had more to do with reading comprehension and writing skills than actual police work. The court concluded that the test did not show any attempt to discriminate, and future appellants must show such an attempt in order for their case to be examine by the Court's strict scrutiny in regard to the Equal Protection Clause. The Court's decision embraces a minimal amount of invidious discrimination rather than improving upon the arguably weak principles that Brown established. In "Discriminatory Intent and the Taming of Brown" the same Strauss echoes this notion that, "of the several possible conceptions of discrimination, the Court chose the one that appeared to be the most determinate and the least far reaching" (Glennon. 480). The role of the Court in this case proved to establish that strict scrutiny would not be used in future cases except when a statute itself was discriminatory.
Daniel Ortiz describes the impact of this and other elements of the ruling in Washington v. Davis in The Myth of Equal Protection stating: the Supreme Court gave three reasons for requiring discriminatory motivation: precedent, institutional role, and the slippery slope. Ironically, the precedents on which it relied consisted of jury selection, voting, and school desegregation cases- contexts where today, at least, the Court does not require a meaningful showing of discriminatory motivation on the part of the government decision maker (Glennon. 496). While the court cites precedents as part of their motivation, they selected cases in which racial classifications were used but done so in a covert manner. In effect the court was able to further narrow the results...
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Research essay sample on Equal Protection And Supreme Court Cases
