Legal and policy interpretations of the Fourteenth Amendment in the post-Brown era: A 50-year case study on the policy implementation challenges of Brown v. Board of Education.

摘要

This dissertation research is a case study designed to examine, in retrospect, the effectiveness of laws and policies derived out of the 1954 and 1955 U.S. Supreme Court decisions in the landmark case, Brown v Board of Education of Topeka KS, et. al. The research will examine how Brown was influenced shifts in both legal precedent and judicial interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment posing legal and policy implementation challenges that, depending on the locale, caused social and political impediments that may have impacted the success, or facilitated the failure of the Brown decision. Using a variety of data (case law, primary source materials, legislative policy proposals and scholarly literature) from 1954 through 1979, I will document and analyze, through case studies, various legal, public policy, and social (ideological) shifts that have taken place in the Post-Brown era. The research will examine how Brown edicts have been re-interpreted, convoluting how Brown has been historically interpreted.; This study will research the various legal interpretations of the Fourteenth Amendment, resulting in policy implementation challenges stemming from the Brown decision, as it applies to four states (California, Massachusetts, Michigan and Virginia). Due to the largeness of Brown, as legal icon and as cultural change, these states will represent a sample of the complex locales in which Brown policies were implemented. By researching the case histories of the four states, in four different parts of the country, all with varying sectional, cultural, and socio-economic politics, comparative analyses of how the nation reacted to the decision in the first twenty five years of the Post-Brown era. Hypotheses will seek to test "the success" or "the failure" of Brown, as law, as policy, and as social attitudes. Findings will seek to establish levels of resistance to the Brown decision, the levels of policy compatibility that either gave support to, or contradicted the Brown decision, and examine the Court's consistency in future interpretations of Post-Brown era Fourteenth Amendment. Findings will seek to demonstrate whether factors (legal, cultural and political causation) beyond desegregation and integration results may have had a hidden impact on Brown's success and failure.