Fifty years after the Supreme Court's decision in Brown vs. Board of Education , the debate still rages over the consequences of this momentous ruling. In this authoritative account of constitutional law concerning race, Michael Klarman details, in the richest and most thorough discussion to date, how and whether Supreme Court decisions do, in fact, matter.

When Thurgood Marshall stood in front of the Warren Court to argue the case that statutes segregating public schools should be invalidated, profound changes had already occurred in American race relations. For the justices, Brown posed a conflict between law and politics. Traditional sources of constitutional interpretation--text, original intent, precedent, and custom--seemed to indicate that school segregation was permissible. But most of the justices found that practice deeply abhorrent. In creating new precedent in Brown the judges relied on their personal values, values heavily influenced by larger historical forces.

The consequences of the Brown decision are similarly difficult to disentangle from the social and political context of the time. Brown unquestioningly had a significant impact--it brought race issues to public attention and it mobilized supporters of the ruling. It also, however, energized the opposition. In a highly provocative interpretation of the decision's connection to the civil rights movement, Klarman argues that Brown was more important for mobilizing southern white opposition to racial change than for encouraging direct-action protest. By mandating court-ordered school desegregation, Brown created the occasion for violent confrontation and radicalized southern politics, leading to the election of politicians who calculated that violent suppression of civil rights demonstrations would win votes. It was such violence--vividly captured on television--that Klarman argues ultimately transformed northern opinion on race--a backlash that led to the enactment of landmark civil rights legislation in the mid-1960's.

A monumental investigation of the Supreme Court's rulings on race, From Jim Crow To Civil Rights spells out in compelling detail the political and social context within which the Supreme Court Justices operate and the consequences of their decisions for American race relations.

Features

• An important contribution to the debates over the nature of judicial decision making and the importance of Supreme Court decisions
• No other book has spelled out in such rich detail the political and social context against which Supreme Court justices operate
• Offers the most careful and detailed exegesis of the ways in which Brown mattered