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Plessey Vs. Ferguson And Brown V. The Board Of Education

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In 1803, the decision in Marbury v Madison held that the Supreme Court had the ability to practice the process of judicial review. With this ruling, the Court gave itself the power to deem legislation constitutional or unconstitutional. With this bolstered power, the Supreme Court made numerous landmark decisions throughout the 19th and during the first half of the 20th centuries. The Supreme Court’s power of judicial review played an integral role in shaping post-bellum racial laws and attitudes. In the cases of Plessey v. Ferguson and Brown v. The Board of Education the Supreme Court invoked judicial review to assess racial segregation policies as they related to the 14th Amendment. Both Plessey and Brown are landmark cases because they …show more content…

The Plessey ruling truly embodied the overarching racial attitudes of the Southern United States in the Post-Reconstruction era. With the ratification of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments slavery had been abolished and Constitutional precedents were established that would seemingly pave the way for Americans of all races to begin to achieve equality. It is stated in the 14th that all citizens shall not have their basic civil rights infringed upon without due process of the law, and it is also stated that all citizens are guaranteed equal protection under the law. At first view, such measures should have eliminated official racist practices, yet racism prevalent throughout the United States and blacks were still considered to be inferior to whites. Many Americans, especially in the South, sought to continue current racist practices. Yet state segregation laws and other official racist practices needed a strong legal backing, and the Plessey decision provided exactly that. By establishing that segregation would be allowed if conditions were “separate but equal” whites throughout the country were given the precedent they needed to ensure blacks remained inferior. Although the decision claims that “equality”

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