Text of Brown v. Board of Education
Part of the series on |
U.S. Discrimination Law |
Standards of Review |
Other Legal Theories |
Defining Moments in Law |
The 14th Amendment |
Modalities of Constitutional Law |
Brown v. Board was a landmark, and extremely controversial, 1954 Supreme Court decision that ordered racial desegregation of public schools. It was based on the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, and on social science research that claimed to show that black children have trouble learning unless white children are in the classroom. The decision led to later decisions requiring forced racial busing of school children.
Law & Social Change
It is debatable how much actual desegregation was a result of this ruling and related federal court decisions. This raises interesting questions as to the role of the Supreme Court in bringing about actual social change. No one today will dispute the need to end the earlier system of segregated schools, and the importance of the decision, but many will query whether it changed that much, or if its use was rather in sending a definitive signal that the days of segregation and institutionalized racism were at a close.
Other Links
Until the article is expanded, please see
- Earl Warren
- Fourteenth Amendment
- Plessy v. Ferguson, for the pre-Brown consensus.