Justice for All by Jim Newton

Author:Jim Newton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US

Chapter 19

RESISTANCE

It is not defiance for defiance sake, but for the purpose of raising basic and fundamental constitutional questions. My action is raising a call for strict adherence to the

Constitution of the United States as it was written—for a cessation of usurpation

and abuses. My action seeks to avoid having state sovereignty sacrificed on the altar

of political expediency.

GOVERNOR GEORGE WALLACE, BLOCKING ENTRANCE

TO THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA1

BROWN V. BOARD OF EDUCATION had many contributors, but in the end it was Warren’s feat. Its unanimity was his singular accomplishment. Beyond that, the opinion itself expressed much of what constituted his most impressive self. It was restrained, committed to principle, self-conscious of political ramifications. It was, above all, fair. He had aimed to expand the reach of liberty and to codify the Declaration of Independence’s great promises. In that, he largely succeeded. But Warren’s concern for the politics of Brown also had convinced him it was important to offer gentle encouragement to moderates, particularly in the South, so that they would lead the way to the liberty that the Court commanded. In that, he did not succeed, at least in the short run. And he had himself to blame, in part. For just as Brown’s strengths were Warren’s, so too were its weaknesses.

Among the first to spot the vulnerability of Brown was the New York Times’s James Reston. Reston was a sparkling little Scotsman, irrepressible in pursuit of a story and bitingly intelligent. In 1954, he was coming into his own as the greatest reporter of his generation, emerging from Lippmann’s shadow, awing Washington with his diverse, well-connected sources, and seducing readers with his easy command of language. Reston was versatile—he had started as a sportswriter and had worked as a correspondent in London, where in 1937 he had confronted a surly Justice Hugo Black with questions about Black’s prior membership in the Ku Klux Klan. Since returning to the United States, Reston had mastered many things but understood few more thoroughly than politics. He watched Warren settle into the Court and greeted the early indicators with approval, reporting just days after Warren’s confirmation that the other justices appreciated their new chief’s hard work and friendly manner as well as his “self command and natural dignity.”2 As that column made clear, Reston could penetrate even the most cloistered institution. And as Reston read Brown the day the decision was announced, he grasped that its significance—as well as its underpinnings—went beyond the law. The decision, Reston wrote in the next morning’s New York Times, “read more like a paper on sociology than a Supreme Court opinion.”3 Reston made that observation appreciatively; indeed, he closed his column by favorably quoting the revered justice Benjamin Cardozo: “The final cause of law is the welfare of society.”4

Reston welcomed the Court’s sociology, for Reston, like Warren, was a man of basic values. He appreciated fairness and saw its evidence in Brown. Others, once clued in to Brown’s sociological premises, were not so understanding. For those critics, the sociology of Brown was that of an amateur outsider, no more valid than the South’s own social structure.

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