Some Legacies of Brown v. Board of Education

This Essay examines three legacies of Brown v. Board of Education. First, it describes the way in which the litigation campaign that culminated in Brown became the model for other strategic litigation campaigns aimed at obtaining court decisions substantially changing the law. Second, it explains how Brown should be understood as part of American political development, the collaboration by the Warren Court with the main lines of the political commitments of the New Deal and (later) the Great Society. Finally, it offers an account of the dissipation of Brown’s legacy in desegregating the schools that connects that development to the transformation of American politics in the 1970s and thereafter.