Separation anxiety: Congress, the courts, and the Constitution

Georgetown Law Journal, Jan 2003 by Clinton, Hillary Rodham, Liu, Goodwin

15. 347 U.S. 483 (1954).

16. Herbert Wechsler, Toward Neutral Principles of Constitutional Law, 73 HARV. L. REV. 1, 34 (1959) (questioning whether in "a situation where the state must practically choose between denying the association to those individuals who wish it or imposing it on those who would avoid it, [there is] a basis in neutral principles for holding that the Constitution demands that the claims for association should prevail").

17. See, e.g., Stell v. Savannah-Chatman County Bd. of Educ., 220 F. Supp. 667, 684 (S.D. Ga. 1963) (holding Brown inapplicable based on factual finding that "Plaintiffs' assumption of injury to Negro students by the continuance of segregated schools is not supported by any evidence in this case"), rev'd, 333 F.2d 55 (5th Cir. 1964); Briggs v. Elliott, 132 F. Supp. 776, 777 (E.D.S.C. 1955) (holding that Brown does not require "the states [to] mix persons of different races in the schools" and that the "Constitution . . . does not require integration").

18. Brown v. Bd. of Educ., 349 U.S. 294, 301 (1955).

19. Griffin v. County Sch. Bd., 377 U.S. 218, 229 (1964). In 1964, ten years after Brown, only 2.25% of black children in the eleven southern states went to desegregated schools. See James R. Dunn, Title VI, the Guidelines and School Desegregation in the South, 53 VA. L. REV. 42, 44 n.9 (1967).

20. Archibald Cox, The Supreme Court, 1966 Term-Foreword: Constitutional Adjudication and the Promotion of Human Rights, 80 HARV. L. REV. 91, 94 (1966).

21. Id. (emphasis added). The discussion that follows relies heavily on the superb analysis in Robert C. Post & Reva B. Siegel, Essay, Equal Protection by Law: Federal Antidiscrimination Legislation After Morrison and Kimel, 110 YALE L.J. 441, 515-22 (2000).

22. United States v. Jefferson County Bd. of Educ., 372 F.2d 836, 847 (5th Cir. 1966) (emphases omitted).

23. The Civil Rights Act passed the House by a vote of 290 to 130, with 104 of the dissenters being southern Democrats. See LUCAS A. POWE, JR., THE WARREN COURT AND AMERICAN POLITICS 232 (2000). In the Senate, the Act eventually passed by a vote of 79 to 18, but not before an 82-day filibuster by southern Senators taking up "63,000 pages of the Congressional Record." Id. at 233.

24. Disquieting excerpts from the legislative history are summarized in Post & Siegel, supra note 21, at 492-93 & nn.240-48.

25. 2 STATUTORY HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 1132 (Bernard Schwartz ed., 1970) (statement of Rep. Abernethy).

26. Id. at 1293 (statement of Sen. Ervin).

27. Browning v. Slenderella Sys., 341 P.2d 859, 869 (Wash. 1959) (Mallery, J., dissenting).

28. Robert Bork, Civil Rights-A Challenge, NEW REPUBLIC, Aug. 31, 1963, at 22.

29. See Post & Siegel, supra note 21, at 492-93.

30. See Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States, 379 U.S. 241, 258 (1964).

31. Id. at 257.

32. See generally 1 BRUCE ACKERMAN, WE THE PEOPLE: FOUNDATIONS (1991); Larry D. Kramer, The Supreme Court, 2000 Term-Foreword: We the Court, 115 HARV. L. REV. 4 (2001); Post & Siegel, supra note 21, at 513-22. "The Court's authority to interpret the Equal Protection Clause thus depends on more than a mastery of complex precedents or an insularity from political passions. It rests on a special kind of socially situated judgment, a capacity to discern shifts in the ways Americans understand the practices and institutions that organize American life, and an ability to speak from and to those evolving and contested understandings." Id. at 515.