Justice deferred a half century after Brown v. Board of Education

The road to Brown v. Board of Education (1954) was a slow and circuitous climb, whereas the retreat down from Brown has been swift and direct. This article reviews 4 distinct U.S. Supreme Court eras of racial decisions: the segregation, preparatory, desegregation, and resegregation eras. It notes both the strengths and weaknesses of Brown and discusses the effects of school desegregation. Did racial diversity improve the life chances of African American children as intended? The results of longitudinal research demonstrate that the effects have been positive, although these results are not widely known by the American public. The article challenges this and other misconceptions about school desegregation that have become entrenched in the public's thinking and addresses ways to rekindle the spirit of Brown.     

The scientific attack on Brown v. Board of Education, 1954-1964

Psychologists' work was cited in the Supreme Court case of Brown v. Board of Education (1954). One criticism of the citation was that psychology could be used to overturn the Brown decision and return the country to segregation. A historical examination of such an attempt to overturn Brown in the early 1960s on the basis of new psychological knowledge shows that psychology was not persuasive in the face of the civil rights movement. The failure of segregationists to overturn Brown with psychological experts underscores how psychology is ineluctably bound to the larger society.     

Kenneth B. Clark in the patterns of American culture

Kenneth B. Clark is most well-remembered as the social scientist cited by the U.S. Supreme Court in footnote 11 of its decision in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. His presence in that decision came to symbolize the role that social science could play in changing social policy and public attitudes. As an African American social scientist who was prominent during a time of great turmoil over racial issues in the United States, Clark also became a "participant-symbol" in America's discussion of race. Clark contributed to this discussion in the three books he wrote for the general public: Prejudice and Your Child (Clark, 1955), Dark Ghetto (Clark, 1965), and Pathos of Power (Clark, 1974). In this article, the author discusses how these works document Clark's growing pessimism about the prospects for improving race relations. In addition, Clark's place in contemporary American debates about Brown v. Board of Education and the persistence of racial equality is considered.     

Amicus Curiae Brief for the United States Supreme Court on Mental Health Issues Associated With “Physician‐Assisted Suicide”

After providing background material related to the Supreme Court cases on “physician‐assisted suicide” (Washington v. Glucksberg, 1997, and Vacco v. Quill, 1997), this article presents the amicus curiae brief that was submitted to the United States Supreme Court by 2 national mental health organizations, a state psychological association, and an ad hoc coalition of mental health professionals. The document focuses on the role mental health professionals can play in discussions about hastened death. In particular, it is asserted that mental health professionals can assess capacity the decision‐making process, and the role of coercion in such decisions. The effect of the brief on the Supreme Court and within the organizations involved is also discussed.     

A VIEW FROM ALBEMARLE1

This paper was originally delivered in July of 1975, within a few weeks of the Supreme Court's decision in the case of Albemarle Paper Company v. Moody. The law, of course, does not stand still. Less than a year after the Albemarle decision, the Supreme Court's decision in Washington v. Davis appeared to turn sharply away from the proposition that the EEOC guidelines are to be applied mechanically as the only legal touchstone of the job relatedness of a test. The Washington decision contains many obscurities and ambiguities, and at the time of writing (October 1976) it appears that at least one more Supreme Court case will be necessary in order to clarify this question. Though the present paper is outdated in some respects because of the Washington decision, it is hoped that it will continue to be of interest for the light it may shed on the interrelationship between the practice of industrial psychology and the judicial process in operation.     

The U.S. Supreme Court Decision in Jaffee v. Redmond: Implications for Counselors

In 1996, the U.S. Supreme Court held that communications between licensed psychotherapists and their patients are privileged under the Federal Rules of Evidence. The nature of privileged communication, the history of this Supreme Court decision, and implications of the decision for counselors are discussed.     

Special Rules for the Church: The “Ministerial” Exception under the Americans with Disabilities Act

Abstract : In the Hosanna‐Tabor case, the United States Supreme Court held that there is a broad exception under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) for employees who are ministers. A Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod school could fire an elementary school teacher with a disability because she was a “called teacher,” even though the termination would otherwise have violated the ADA. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America supported this decision, but this contradicts the ELCA's position with respect to persons living with disabilities. It also reflects an “idolatry of the call” inconsistent with the priesthood of all believers. A better course for the ELCA is to agree to be bound by those standards that it advocates for the secular world.     

Mitchell v. Helms: The Court Charts New Ground on State Aid to Religious Schools

Interpretation of the establishment clause by the Supreme Court has a long history. Since first addressing the merits of state aid to religiously affiliated schools, the Court has examined a wide array of programs involving state and federal aid in regular and special education. The recent Supreme Court decision in Mitchell v. Helms is the latest in this long line of cases considering the constitutionality of government assistance benefiting students in religious schools. In Helms, the Court decided the constitutionality of Chapter 2 of Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 that allows states to loan computers, library books, and other instructional materials to religious schools. The purpose of this article is to examine briefly the facts in the case and then discuss the cases's three separate opinions. The authors then consider the implications of Helms for the provision of government aid to students attending religiously affiliated schools.     

The triumph of the segregationists? A historiographical inquiry into psychology and the Brown litigation

Psychologists testified at the trials of Brown v. Board of Education and helped write briefs that were submitted to the Supreme Court on appeal. Psychologists were once proud of what they did in Brown but are now seen as liberal reformers who masked their political wishes in the guise of social science. The argument that psychologists involved with Brown were social reformers rather than objective scientists dates to the segregationist critique of Brown. The author traces the history of the critique of the Brown psychologists from its segregationist origins to its acceptance by mainstream social scientific and historical scholars. The author concludes that the critique is based on a misreading of what the Brown psychologists did during the litigation.     

The Deserving Underclass: a Focus for Social Work Policy in the Year 2001

The Supreme Court decision in the case of Jane Lib vs. the State of Connecticut (1999) held that the institution of matrimony is unconstitutional because it violates the Eighth Amendment prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment. This decision, while freeing some people from bondage, has generated a new type of sexual underclass. The social work profession needs to develop policy guidelines to serve this new underclass.     

The power of the Brown v. Board of Education decision: theorizing threats to sustainability

Interviews with African American and White American elders capture the immediate power of the Brown v. Board of Education (1954) decision and the biography of its impact over time. This article reviews the lived experience of the decision and theorizes 3 threats to sustainability that ruthlessly undermined the decision over time: (a) the unacknowledged and enormous sacrifice endured by the African American community in the name of desegregation; b) the violent and relentless resistance to the decision by government officials, educators, and many White community members; and (c) the dramatic shrinkage of the vision of Brown from the dismantling of White supremacy to a technical matter of busing. Implications are drawn for the study of desegregation and for the study of sustainability of social justice more broadly.     

The discovery of southern childhoods: psychology and the transformation of schooling in the Jim Crow South

Although the psychology of race in America has been the subject of significant research, psychological science in the principal region of racial interaction before Brown v. Board of Education-the South--has received little attention. This article argues that the introduction of psychological ideas about children by means of school reform in the South during the half-century before the Brown decision established a cultural foundation for both Black resistance to segregated schools and White determination to preserve them. In 1900, southern children and their schools were an afterthought in a culture more committed to tradition and racial stability than innovation and individual achievement. The advent of northern philanthropy, however, brought with it a new psychology of childhood. Although the reformers did not intend to subvert segregation, their premises downplayed natural endowment, including racial inheritance, and favored concepts highlighting nurture: that personality is developmental, childhood foundational, and adversity detrimental. Decades of discussion of children in their learning environment gave southern Blacks a rationale for protest and Whites a logical defense for conservative reaction.     

Investigating jury bias in a child molestation case

Defendants in most criminal cases have a constitutional right to be tried by a jury, however they may waive that right and elect to be tried by a judge. In several states and the federal criminal system, waiver of a jury trial requires the consent of the prosecution. Based on a United States Supreme Court decision in Singer v. United States, a criminal defendant does not have a constitutional right to bench a trial, although the Court acknowledged that certain cases might exist in which “passion, prejudice … public feeling” or other factors might render an impartial trial by jury impossible or unlikely. The present article describes one attempt to prove the Singer exception because of strongly biased pretrial publicity in a Virginia child molestation case.     

The future of involuntary civil commitment in the U.S.A. after Kansas v. Hendricks

This article examines new sexual predator commitment laws enacted recently in the United States to civilly commit dangerous sex offenders after they have served their prison sentences. It then examines Kansas v. Hendricks, a Supreme Court case that upheld these laws as constitutionally permitted. The article next describes the broad parameters that demarcate the government's civil commitment authority identified by the Supreme Court in that case. The author concludes that Hendricks establishes that the state has expansive civil commitment power much greater than our previous understanding. The government may use civil commitment solely to protect the public from dangerous individuals without proving a medically recognized mental disorder, recent evidence of dangerousness, or a treatment purpose or possibility. Moreover, this quarantine system may be justified by proving the same unlawful behavior for which the individual has already been criminally punished.     

In the public interest: intellectual disability, the Supreme Court, and the death penalty

This article deals with a case that recently came before the U.S. Supreme Court. The issues involved whether attorneys provided effective assistance to a person convicted of murder when no mitigating evidence was presented (either strategically or by neglect) to the jury concerning the intellectual disabilities of their client during the death penalty phase of the trial. The Supreme Court had previously ruled that the death penalty for intellectually disabled individuals (mentally retarded) constituted cruel and unusual punishment. In this case the attorneys made a strategic decision not to present possibly mitigating evidence for the death penalty phase. The Supreme Court considered whether the appeals court abdicated its judicial review responsibilities. The results of psychological evaluations are presented, and the decisions of the Supreme Court are discussed.     

Dworkin and Casey on abortion

This article responds to two important recent treatments of abortion rights. I will mainly discuss Ronald Dworkin's recent writings concerning abortion: his article "Unenumerated rights: whether and how Roe should be overruled," and his book Life's Dominion. In these writings Dworkin presents a novel view of what the constitutional and moral argument surronding abortion is really about. Both debates actually turn, he argues, on the question of how to interpret the widely shared idea that human life is sacred. At the heart of the abortion debate is the essentially religious notion that human life has value which transcends its value to any particular person; abortion is therefore at bottom a religious issue. Dworkin hopes to use this analysis to show that the religion clauses of the First Amendment provide a "textual home" for a woman's right to choose abortion. I wish to scrutinize this suggestion here; I want to probe the precise consequences for abortion rights of such an understanding of their basis. I will argue that the consequences are more radical than Dworkin seems to realize. The other work I will examine here is the important 1992 Supreme Court decision on abortion, Planned Parenthood v. Casey. The controlling opinion in that case, written jointly by Justices Kennedy, O'Connor, and Souter, strongly reaffirmed Roe v. Wade, but also upheld most of the provisions of a Pennsylvania statute that had mandated various restrictions on abortion. The justices' basis for upholding these restictions was their introduction of a new constitutional standard for abortion regulations, an apparently weaker standard than those that had governed previous Supreme Court abortion decisions. I think there is a flaw in Casey's new constitutional test for abortion regulations, and I will explain, when we turn to Casey, what it is and why it bears a close relation to Dworkin's reluctance to carry his argument as far as it seems to go.     

Expert Testimony and Sexual Predator Statutes after Hendricks

The recent decision of the United States Supreme Court in Kansas v. Hendricks (1997) upheld a sexual predator statute that authorizes civil commitment of certain sex offenders who have been convicted of sexual offenses and have served criminal sentences for those offenses. This case raises a variety of Constitutional questions in the United States, but it also raises a series of interesting questions about the appropriate scope of expert testimony by psychologists regarding commitments under these statutes. These issues regarding expert testimony are significant both in their own right and because addressing them confronts one with serious difficulties regarding the normative foundations of the statutes. This paper examines the significance of the Court's brief substantive due process analysis for the role of psychological expert testimony regarding commitment under these statutes, and it identifies but does not attempt to resolve the associated normative concerns regarding the justification for commitment under these statutes.     

The aftermath of Ford v. Wainwright

Whatever happened to Alvin Ford? This paper describes the aftermath of the Supreme Court's 1986 ruling in Ford v. Wainwright. The Ford decision held that exempting the mentally incompetent from execution is a matter of constitutional right, and hence the determination of who is competent for execution cannot be left solely in the hands of the executive branch of the government. We describe the hearing in Ford's case in federal district court that occurred after the Supreme Court's decision, the judge's ruling, and Ford's subsequent (and final) appeal. We conclude that despite the decision in Ford, it remains all but impossible for defense attorneys to prove that psychotic death row clients are incompetent for execution.     

Equitable relief as a relay between juridical and biopower: the case of school desegregation

The present paper looks at the intersection of juridical and biopower in the U.S. Supreme Court’s school desegregation cases. These cases generally deploy “equitable relief” as a relay between the juridicially-specified injury of segregation and the biopolitical mandates of integration, allowing broad-based biopolitical remedies for juridically identified problems. This strategy enabled the Courts to negotiate between these forms of power. The analysis here thus suggests the continued relevance of juridical power, and also the limits of Foucault’s own analysis, which suggested that biopower tended to fully colonize juridical power by way of norms.     

Political Party, Strength of Identification, and Knowledge and Evaluation of Bush v. Gore

Two studies examined knowledge of and attitudes toward Bush v. Gore , the Supreme Court decision that ended Election 2000, to examine the effects of a strong counterattitudinal message about a high-relevance issue. Republicans reported the most positive attitudes, while high-identification Democrats possessed the most accurate knowledge (Study 1); high-identification participants rated Bush v. Gore as more important and personally relevant than those less identified. Upon persuasion, high-identification Republicans maintained positive attitudes unrelated to knowledge and issue importance, while Democrats and low-identification Republicans reported negative attitudes predicted by persuasion (Study 2). High-identification Republicans reported more positive and fewer negative emotions upon persuasion, with emotions most predictive of attitudes. Implications for the role of emotions in resistance to persuasion are discussed.