Liberate Public Schools:  Phase Nine
 
116
Lesson from Thirty-Year
Carlin v. Board of Education lawsuit:
Free Public Schools
from Government by Lawsuit
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Classifications based solely upon race must be scrutinized with particular care since they are contrary to our tradition and hence constitutionally suspect. 347 U.S. 497,499. Also see Brown v. Board of Education (Brown II) (1955), 349 U.S. 294,298.

Justice Jackson’s record reflects he would have opposed an interpretation of the holding in 1954 as sanctioning assignment of students, on the basis of their race, to particular schools for the purpose of racial balance in 2000. Adding to his concern would have been enlarging the role of the judiciary as the authority for such assignments, in view of his central part in opposing the “supremacy” of judicial power over the legislative power of the people.

Justice Jackson’s advocacy of respect by the judicial branch for the equality of the legislative and executive branches was expressed in his book The Struggle for Judicial Supremacy. In his capacity as Solicitor General, he had been at the center of the controversy created by the Supreme Court in nullifying New Deal measures, which President Franklin Roosevelt decried as in excess of its power.
 

Groundswell Intervenors
Question Use of Lawsuits
to Racially Assign Public School Students

I had the above history in mind in September 1977 when I wrote “Busing, Not Integration, Opposed,” published in The San Diego Union (Appendix I):

... A constitutional crisis was created then by the exercise of (judicial) power to veto legislation which the President and many others claimed impinged on the legislative branch.

My reference to this earlier exercise of federal judicial power was followed by my protest of a latter day assertion of judicial power by a state high court decision:

The constitutional crisis today is even more serious, for theNext
 


Brown II Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 349 U.S. 294 (1955)
Topeka, Kansas
 
Carlin Carlin v. Board of Education, San Diego Unified School District, San Diego Superior Court No. 303800 (1967-1998)
San Diego, California
 
Carlin Board of Education v. Superior Court, 61 Cal.App.4th 411 (Feb.1998)
[conclusion of Carlin
v. Board of Education]
San Diego, California
     
  Liberate: Phase 9, pages 115 - 124 — PreviousNext

Liberate Public Schools from Government by Lawsuit Contents
by Elmer Enstrom, Jr. - a pro bono struggle against Outline
racially balancing public school students — in a 30-year lawsuit.
    
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