Today in Supreme Court History: September 7, 1958

9/7/1958: The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas denied the Little Rock School Board's petition to suspend its integration program. In Cooper v. Aaron (1958), the Supreme Court ordered the integration of Central High School.

Comments

[apedad]

The Governor and the Legislature of Arkansas openly resisted the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education. On February 20, 1958, five months after the integration crisis involving the Little Rock Nine, members of the school board (along with the Superintendent of Schools) filed suit in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas, urging suspension of its plan of desegregation. The relief the plaintiffs requested was for the African American children to be returned to segregated schools and for the implementation of the desegregation plan to be postponed for two and a half years. The district court granted the school board's request, but the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit reversed.

Question: Were Arkansas officials bound by federal court orders mandating desegregation?

In a signed, unanimous per curiam opinion, the Court held that the Arkansas officials were bound by federal court orders that rested on the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education. While the Court noted that the school board had acted in good faith, that most of the problems stemmed from the official opposition of the Arkansas state government to racial integration in both word and deed, it was constitutionally impermissible under the Equal Protection Clause to maintain law and order by depriving the black students of their equal rights under the law.

More importantly, the Court held that since the Supremacy Clause of Article VI made the U.S. Constitution the supreme law of the land, and Marbury v. Madison made the Supreme Court the final interpreter of the Constitution, the precedent set forth in Brown v. Board of Education was the supreme law of the land and was therefore binding on all the states, regardless of any state laws contradicting it. The Court therefore rejected the contention that the Arkansas legislature and Governor were not bound by the Brown decision.

[DaivdBehar]

Please, read Article I Section 1, giving all making power to the Congress. If you want judicial review, amend the constitution. Until you do, judicial review is lawless and void.

[David Nieporent]

Please Read Article III, Section 1, giving judicial review to the judiciary.

[DaivdBehar]

Hey lawyer dumbasses.

Prior to the Sixties, racial disparities in social pathology were tiny, a few percent more bastardy, unemployment, crime victimization.

After you got through with race the disparities soared to 400%. Good job lawyer dumbasses.

Naturally, school segregation markedly worsened, as did the quality of education for blacks after this series of lawyer dumbass decisions. Whites removed their kids, and never returned.

Good job, lawyer dumbasses, making things far worse for the diverse.

[Dan Schiavetta]

"Slavery is done, Alex."

"We wouldn't know ourselves any more!"

(Lincoln and Alexander Stephens at the Hampton Roads conference, in the movie "Lincoln".)

[loki13]

“What did you expect? 'Welcome, sonny?' 'Make yourself at home?' 'Marry my daughter?' You’ve got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know… morons.”

[Enrique]

As I pointed out last year, the hearing referred to in this post was in 1957 (not 1958); I know because I wrote an entire paper about President Eisenhower's legal authority -- or lack thereof -- to order the use of military force inside the US absent an external enemy. See: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3317895