The decisions made by the U.S. Supreme Court are important to Americans, including these people demonstrating on April 25, 2024.
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As the nation marks the 70th anniversary of Brown v. Board, one of its most significant side effects − the large-scale loss of Black teachers − continues to affect America’s schools.
The U.S. Supreme Court.
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With their upcoming decision concerning whether Donald Trump can appear on the Colorado ballot, Supreme Court justices face the possibility that the ruling could be ignored or defied by the public.
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans.
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As the nation approaches the 70-year anniversary of Brown vs. Board of Education, an education professor lays out the state of school segregation in America.
A Black schoolroom in Mississippi in 1939.
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Marlee Bunch, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
During the civil rights era, Black teachers were valued members of the community and often taught generations of family members.
Thurgood Marshall, left, had a very different view of the purpose of the Supreme Court than his successor, Clarence Thomas.
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Throughout Thomas’ tenure on the court, he has pushed the Supreme Court to replace Marshall’s vision with one more amenable to the powerful than the powerless.
Policemen keep a mob back as James Meredith, a Black student trying to enroll at the University of Mississippi, is driven away after being refused admittance to the all-white university in Oxford on Sept. 25, 1962.
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The Brown v. Board of Education case, which resulted in the Supreme Court outlawing school segregation, originally started in Clarendon County, South Carolina.
Court-ordered desegregation has happened in the U.S. as recently as 2015, when a federal judge issued a desegregation order to the Cleveland, Miss., school district.
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President Joe Biden has urged lawmakers to act over abortion rights following the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. But is there a route to legislation?
A U.S. Federal Marshal escorts Gail Etienne to her first day of school on Nov. 14, 1960.
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In the early 1960s, the McDonogh 19 school was the site of fierce opposition to racial integration. The building is now owned by one of the Black girls who first integrated the school.
School funding inequities persist along racial and economic lines.
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Brown v. Board didn’t overrule ‘separate-but-equal’ but it had that end. A law scholar explains how there is a lesson there for conservatives on today’s Court looking to end abortion in the US.
Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court on December 3, 2018, in Washington.
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Despite a historically diverse high court, its voting rules often fail to include minority viewpoints. That could be avoided if justices decided their cases by unanimous vote.
The collective memory of school desegregation is of anger and division, like in this photo of 15-year-old Elizabeth Eckford walking away from a crowd outside a high school in Little Rock, Ark.
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Americans’ collective memory of school desegregation involves crowds of screaming white protesters. But less well known are the whites who stood by quietly, and those who approved of the changes.
The Supreme Court has no army to enforce its decisions; its authority rests solely on its legitimacy.
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The Supreme Court is a leading player in enacting policy in the US. But it has no army to enforce its decisions; its authority rests solely on its legitimacy.
Global Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and Broeklundian Professor of Political Science Emerita, City University of New York