Professor Klarman Writes About the History of the Civil Rights Movement
In Unfinished Business, his new book and the latest in the Inalienable Rights series by Oxford University Press, University of Virginia law professor Michael Klarman examines the history of the civil rights movement and the work that remains to fully achieve its vision. Assessing the ultimate effectiveness of seminal Supreme Court cases such as Brown vs. Board in light of subsequent events, he suggests a potential empirical basis for the constitutional minimalism suggested elsewhere by, for instance, University of Chicago law professor Cass Sunstein.
Professor Klarman writes:
In 1971 the Court sustained the busing of students to achieve desegregation and approved a sweeping remedial order that neutralized the effects of housing segregation on the racial composition of student bodies….[I]n 1954 no justice had dreamed of such a thing.
The justices had become fed up with the intransigence of southern whites, and they adjusted legal doctrines accordingly….
During the 1960s, more than in any previous era, the Supreme Court sided with racial minorities against their oppressors. Yet by this date, the justices were following the lead of Congress and the president, who in turn were reflecting a transformation in public opinion on race