Parents Involved and the Meaning of Brown: An Old Debate Renewed

Authors

Jonathon L. Entin

Abstract

This Article examines some of the jurisprudential roots of the racial discrimination debate, tracing the issue back to Brown and its immediate aftermath but finding the seeds of the disagreement in the ambiguities of the first Justice Harlan's celebrated dissenting opinion in Plessy v. Ferguson. The tensions between the two approaches did not matter in Plessy because segregation was impermissible under either theory, but the two approaches pointed in opposite directions in Parents Involved. Part II offers an overview of the Seattle and Louisville policies that were struck down in Parents Involved. Part III examines the various opinions in Parents Involved to illuminate the basic theoretical differences that divided the Court. Part IV examines the iconic decision in Brown and explores the aftermath of that ruling as lower courts struggled to determine how to remedy unconstitutional school segregation with little guidance from the Supreme Court, which did not grapple with remedial complexities for more than a dozen years after handing down its landmark ruling. Finally, Part V examines the complexities of Justice Harlan's Plessy dissent and how those complexities continue to reverberate in the contemporary debate about racial discrimination.