EQUAL JUSTICE UNDER LAW
Warren, Chief Justice Earl
'Equal Justice UndeR Law by CHIEF JUSTICE EARL WARREN The Progressive presents below a slightly condensed version of the United States Supreme Court's historic decision striking down the State of...
...Chief Justice Marshall spoke for a unanimous court in saying that: "If the legislatures of the several states may, at will, annul the judgments of the court of the United States, and destroy the rights acquired under those judgments, the Constitution itself becomes a solemn mockery...
...On Sept...
...They are at one with the justices still on the court who participated in that basic decision as to its correctness and that decision is now unanimously reaffirmed...
...On Sept...
...Recognizing the vital importance of a decision of the issues in time to permit arrangements to be made for the 1958-59 school year, we convened in special term on Aug...
...On Feb...
...The court determined that this was not a reason for departing from the approved plan, and ordered the school board and superintendent to proceed with it...
...Our Constitutional ideal of equal justice under law is thus made a living truth...
...that there was "tension and unrest among the school administrators, the classroom teachers, the pupils and the latters' parents, which inevitably had an adverse effect upon the educational program...
...25, however, the President of the United States dispatched federal troops to Central High School and admission of the Negro students to the school was thereby effected...
...As found by the District Court in subsequent proceedings, the governor's action had not been requested by the school authorities and was entirely unheralded...
...In this statement the board recognized that: "It is our responsibility to comply with federal constitutional requirements and we intend to do so when the Supreme Court of the United States outlines the method to be followed...
...In view of the nature of the motions, he referred them to the entire court...
...No state legislator or executive or judicial officer can war against the Constitution without violation of his undertaking to support it...
...that there were "repeated incidents of more or less serious violence directed against the Negro students and their property...
...The Fourteenth Amendment embodied and emphasized that ideal...
...12, 1958, as already mentioned, we unanimously affirmed the judgment of the Court of Appeals...
...One may well sympathize with the position of the board in the face of the frustrating conditions which have confronted it, but, regardless of the board's good faith, the actions of the other state agencies responsible for those conditions compel us to reject the board's legal position...
...that a school official was threatened with violence...
...But the officers caused the children to be removed from the school during the morning because they had difficulty controlling a large and demonstrating crowd which had gathered at the high school...
...The next school day was Monday, Sept...
...The Constitution created a government dedicated to equal justice under law...
...Their position in essence was that because of extreme public hostility, which they stated had been engendered largely by the official attitudes and actions of the governor and the legislature, the maintenance of a sound educational program at Central High School, with the Negro students in attendance, would be impossible...
...They were then replaced by federalized National Guardsmen who remained throughout the balance of the school year...
...First came, in November, 1956, an amendment to the state constitution flatly commanding the Arkansas General Assembly to oppose "in every constitutional manner the un-consti-tutional desegregation decisions of May 17, 1954 and May 31, 1955 of the United States Supreme Court...
...The record before us clearly establishes that the growth of the board's difficulties to a magnitude beyond its unaided power to control is the product of state action...
...The school board and the superintendent of schools nevertheless continued with preparations to carry out the first stage of the desegregation program...
...The school board itself describes the situation in this language: "The legislative, executive, and judicial departments of the state government opposed the desegregation of Little Rock schools by enacting laws, calling out troops, making statements vilifying federal law and federal courts, and failing to utilize state law enforcement agencies and judicial processes to maintain public peace...
...It necessarily involves a claim by the governor and legislature of a state that there is no duty on state officials to obey federal court orders resting on this court's considered interpretation of the United States Constitution...
...Among other things the court found that the past year at Central High School had been attended by conditions of "chaos, bedlam and turmoil...
...4 and hearing the appeal, reversed the district court...
...We come now to the aspect of the proceedings presently before us...
...The National Guard was then withdrawn from the school...
...State authorities were thus duty bound to devote every effort toward initiating desegregation and bringing about the elimination of racial discrimination in the public school system...
...It is necessary only to recall some basic Constitutional propositions which are settled doctrine...
...Thus law and order are not here to be preserved by depriving the Negro children of their Constitutional rights...
...The Negro respondents, on Aug...
...The controlling legal principles are plain...
...We reject these contentions...
...The principles announced in that decision and the obedience of the states to them, according to the command of the Constitution, are indispensable for the protection of the freedoms guaranteed by our fundamental charter for all of us...
...The board therefore proposed that the Negro students already admitted to the school be withdrawn and sent to segregated schools, and that all further steps to carry out the board's desegregation program be postponed for a period later suggested by the board to be two and one-half years...
...The board's petition for postponement in this proceeding states: "The effect of that action [of the governor] was to harden the core of opposition to the plan and cause many persons who theretofore had reluctantly accepted the plan to believe that there was some power in the State of Arkansas which, when exerted, could nullify the federal law and permit disobedience of the decree of this [district] court, and from that date hostility to the plan was increased and criticism of the officials of the [school] district has become more bitter and unrestrained...
...We likewise have accepted the findings of the district court as to the conditions at Central High School during the 1957-1958 school year, and also the findings that the educational progress of all the students, white and colored, of that school has suffered and will continue to suffer if the conditions which prevailed last year are permitted to continue...
...18, 1958, after convening in special session on Aug...
...23, 1957...
...Whoever, by virtue of public position under a state government, denies or takes away the equal protection of the laws, violates the Constitutional inhibition...
...On May 20, 1954, three days after the first Brown opinion, the Little Rock District School Board adopted, and on May 23, 1954, made public, a statement of policy entitled "Supreme Court Decision—Segregation in Public Schools...
...Every state legislator and executive and judicial officer is solemnly committed by oath taken pursuant to Article VI, 3 "to support this Constitution...
...In short, the Constitutional rights of children not to be discriminated against in school admission on grounds of race or color declared by this court in the Brown case can neither be nullified openly and directly by state legislators or state executive or judicial officers, nor nullified indirectly by them through evasive schemes for segregation whether attempted "ingeniously or ingenuously...
...27, 1957...
...The Negro children entered the high school that morning under the protection of the Little Rock police department and members of the Arkansas state police...
...23, 1958, applied to Mr...
...What has been said, in the light of the facts developed, is enough to dispose of the case...
...Nine Negro children were scheduled for admission in September, 1957, to Central High School, which has more than 2,000 students...
...3, 1957, the board petitioned the district court for instructions, and the court, after a hearing, found that the board's request of the Negro students to stay away from the high school had been made because of the stationing of the military guards by the state authorities...
...The basic decision in Brown was unanimously reached by this Court only after the case had been briefed and twice argued and the issues had been given the most serious consideration...
...That decree was rendered May 31, 1955...
...However, we should answer the premise of the actions of the governor and legislature that they are not bound by our holding in the Brown case...
...yielded to the violence and disorder which have followed upon the actions of the governor and legislature...
...Article VI of the Constitution makes the Constitution the "supreme law of the land...
...In the formulation of that decree the court recognized that good faith compliance with the principles declared might in some situations "call for elimination of a variety of obstacles in making the transition to school systems operating in accordance with the constitutional principles set forth in our May 17, 1954, decision...
...The Constitutional rights of respondents are not to be sacrificed or "Any Questions...
...The District Court found that the school board's plan had been obstructed by the governor through the use of National Guard troops, and granted a preliminary injunction on Sept...
...The significance of these findings, however, is to be considered in the light of the fact, indisputably revealed by the record before us, that the conditions they depict are directly traceable to the actions of legislators and executive officials of the State of Arkansas, taken in their official capacities, which reflect their own determination to resist this court's decision in the Brown case and which have brought about violent resistance to that decision in Arkansas...
...This decision declared the basic principle that the federal judiciary is supreme in the exposition of the law of the Constitution, and that principle has ever since been respected by this Court and the country as a permanent and indispensable feature of our Constitutional system...
...It can act in no other way...
...that the education of the students had suffered "and under existing conditions will continue to suffer...
...Equal Justice UndeR Law by CHIEF JUSTICE EARL WARREN The Progressive presents below a slightly condensed version of the United States Supreme Court's historic decision striking down the State of Arkansas' direct opposition and "evasive schemes" designed to circumvent the Court's earlier decisions voiding segegra-tion in the nation's public schools...
...After a hearing the district court granted the relief requested by the board...
...But it should go without saying that the vitality of these constitutional principles cannot be allowed to yield simply because of disagreement with them...
...As this court said some forty-one years ago in a unanimous opinion in a case involving another aspect of racial segregation: "It is urged that this proposed segregation will promote the public peace by preventing race conflicts...
...The eight associate justices concurred in Chief Justice Warren's decision—The Editors...
...This must be so, or the Constitutional prohibition has no meaning...
...The next day, Sept...
...The Constitutional provision, therefore, must mean that no agency of the state, or of the officers or agents by whom its powers are exerted, shall deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws...
...20, 1958, the school board and the superintendent of schools filed a petition in the district court seeking a postponement of their program for desegregation...
...Those difficulties, as counsel for the board forthrightly conceded on the oral argument in this court, can also be brought under control by state action...
...In affirming the judgment of the Court of Appeals, which reversed the District Court, we have accepted without reservation the position of the school board, the superintendent of schools, and their counsel that they displayed entire good faith in the conduct of these proceedings and in dealing with the unfortunate and distressing sequence of events which has been outlined...
...As this Court has held earlier] "A state acts by its legislative, its executive, or its judicial authorities...
...On the morning of the next day, Sept...
...Since the first Brown opinion three new justices have come to the court...
...4, 1957, the Negro children attempted to enter the high school but, as the district court later found, units of the Arkansas National Guard "acting pursuant to the Governor's order, stood shoulder to shoulder at the school grounds and thereby forcibly prevented the nine Negro students from entering," as they continued to do every school day during the following three weeks...
...In 1803, Chief Justice Marshall, speaking for a unanimous court, referring to the Constitution as "the fundamental and paramount law of the nation," declared that "it is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is...
...Desirable as this is, and important as is the preservation of the public peace, this aim cannot be accomplished by laws or ordinances which deny rights created or protected by the federal constitution...
...that the board would continue to need "military assistance or its equivalent...
...It is, of course, quite true that the responsibility for public education is primarily the concern of the states, but it is equally true that such responsibilities, like all other state activity, must be exercised consistently with federal Constitutional requirements as they apply to state action...
...Justice Whittaker, as Circuit Justice for the Eighth Circuit, to stay the order of the Court of Appeals withholding its own mandate and also to stay the district court's judgment...
...While the school board was thus going forward with its preparation for desegregating the Little Rock school system, other state authorities, in contrast, were actively pursuing a program designed to perpetuate in Arkansas the system of racial segregation which this Court had held violated the Fourteenth Amendment...
...It was made plain that delay in any guise in order to deny the constitutional rights of Negro children could not be countenanced, and that only a prompt start, diligently and earnestly pursued, to eliminate racial segregation from the public schools could constitute good faith compliance...
...We are urged to uphold a suspension of the Little Rock school board's plan to do away with segregated public schools in Little Rock until state laws to upset and nullify our holding in Brown v. Board of Education have been further challenged and tested in court...
...It was contemplated that desegregation at the high school level would commence in the fall of 1957 and the expectation was that complete desegregation of the school system would be accomplished by 1963...
...The court postponed, pending further argument, formulation of a decree to effectuate this decision...
...that the local police department would not be able "to detail enough men to afford the necessary protection" and that the situation was "intolerable...
...The Court of Appeals, on Aug...
...20, 1957, enjoining the governor and the officers of the Guard from preventing the attendance of Negro children at Central High School, and from otherwise obstructing or interfering with the orders of the court in connection with the plan...
...State support of segregated schools through any arrangement, management, funds, or property cannot be squared with the Amendment's command that no state shall deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws...
...The right of a student not to be segregated on racial grounds in schools so maintained is indeed so fundamental and pervasive that it is embraced in the concept of due process of law...
...The command of the Fourteenth Amendment is that no "state" shall deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws...
...2, 1957, the day before these Negro students were to enter Central High, the school authorities were met with drastic opposing action on the part of the governor of Arkansas who dispatched units of the Arkansas National Guard to the Central High School grounds, and placed the school "off limits" to colored students...
...The Court went on to state: "Courts of equity may properly take into account the public interest in the elimination of such obstacles in a systematic and effective manner...
...The Negro respondents appealed to the Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit...
...It follows that the interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment enunciated by this court in the Brown case is the supreme law of the land, and Article VI of the Constitution makes it of binding effect on the states "any thing in the Constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding...
...28, 1958...
...that a "serious financial burden" had been cast on the school district...
...Regular Army troops continued at the high school until Nov...
...and as he acts in the name and for the state, and is clothed with the state's power, his act is that of the state...
...As this case reaches us it raises questions of the highest importance to the maintenance of the federal system of government...
...2 not to attend the high school "until the legal dilemma was solved...
...On Sept...
...The governor's action caused the school board to request the Negro students on Sept...
...On May 17, 1954, this court decided that enforced racial segregation in the public schools of a state is a denial of the equal protection of the laws enjoined by the Fourteenth Amendment...
Vol. 22 • November 1958 • No. 11
