The Case Of Brown V. Board Of Education Of Topeka

Sixty-two years ago, the Supreme Court ruled the “separate but equal” doctrine unconstitutional. The decision from the Plessy v. Ferguson case was lawfully denounced by the Brown v. Board of Education. The Brown case, which was initiated by the members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), served as a stimulus for challenging segregation in all areas of society, especially in public educational institutions. Among the support for the desegregation in school systems, there was a young yet compelling voice who was heard by numerous ears in the rural city in Farmville, Alabama. The virtuous and determined Barbara Johns, who was only a high school student then led her tiny, hovel-like school’s student body and the Farmville community to file a lawsuit in the hope of terminating the inequality in regards to the educational system.

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas was a milestone in American history, as it began the long process of racial integration, starting with schools. Segregated schools were not equal in quality, so African-American families spearheaded the fight for equality. Brown v. Board stated that public schools must integrate. This court decision created enormous controversy throughout the United States. Without this case, the United States may still be segregated today.

Brown v. Board of Education was a landmark case that was decided by the Supreme Court of America in 1954. It is a case that is believed to have brought to an end decades of increasing racial segregation that was experienced in America’s public schools. The landmark decision of this case was resolved from six separate cases that originated from four states. The Supreme Court is believed to have preferred rearguments in the case because of its preference for presentation of briefs. The briefs were to be heard from both sides of the case, with the focus being on five fundamental questions. The questions focused on the attorneys’ opinions about whether Congress viewed segregation in public schools when it ratified the 14th amendment (Benoit, 2013). Changes were then made to the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.

The Brown v. Board of Education of 1954 is known for desegregating public schools in the U.S. In 1954 the Supreme Court ruled “in the field of public education the doctrine of separate but equal had no place” (Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 1954). It was the 1st major educational policy. The Court’s decision in Brown created not just desegregation strategies, but also instructional approaches such as Title I programs, magnet schools, and bilingual and multicultural education (Contreras & Valverde, 1994).

In August 2015, the case Miller V Davis brought to light the complicated relationship between law and morality. Indeed, Mrs Davis a county clerk in Rowan county (Kentucky), is being sued for not delivering marriage licences to same sex couples as she believes that homosexuality is morally wrong. Thus, despite the fact that same-sex marriage has been made legal by the U.S Supreme Court since June 2015. Ought individuals to apply the law though it is in inadequacy with their moral beliefs? Do the law should be totally free from any moral influence? Many legal scholars have argued on these questions, as well as trying to define the terms “law” and “morality”. While no one has agreed to a universal definition, law can be defined as a “body of rules, whether proceeding from formal enactment or from custom, which a particular state or community recognizes as binding on its members or subjects”. On the other hand, morality is referred to as an “ethical wisdom” , the set of common values unifying a society. This essay will discuss the role of morality in the law, while analysing different legal school of thoughts arguing on the topic. First of all, positivists such as Bentham, Austin and Hart, argued that morality should not interfere with the law as it is created by a legitimate authority. On the other hand, naturalist theorists, such as Aristotle, Fuller and Dworkin, believed in the existence of a “higher law”, highly influenced by morals, has to be integrated in a legal system

The Brown vs Board of Education as a major turning point in African American. Brown vs Board of Education was arguably the most important cases that impacted the African Americans and the white society because it brought a whole new perspective on whether “separate but equal” was really equal. The Brown vs Board of Education was made up of five different cases regarding school segregation. “While the facts of each case are different, the main issue in each was the constitutionality of state-sponsored segregation in public schools ("HISTORY OF BROWN V. BOARD OF EDUCATION") .”

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. once stated, “The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience” (Holmes). In making this comment, Mr. Holmes an American jurist who served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court believed that logic should not be the only particular way of understanding a system of rules, but by the influence of one’s knowledge and legal skepticism toward the law. Similarly, proponent’s of legal realism, which is a naturalistic approach to law that focuses on predicting what judges actually do in deciding cases felt the same way as Oliver. On the other hand, supporters of formalism insisted that the law and legal reasoning should determine all adjudications based on objective facts, unambiguous rules, and logic.

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN NATURAL LAW AND LEGAL POSITIVISM This essay is going to discuss and analyse the differences between two basic principles- natural law and legal positivism. According to Hume, there are two realms of human enquiry , one in the field of facts which is concerned with what ‘ is ‘ actually the case and the other in the field of ‘ought’ that is, what ought to be the case1. Those who believe in the principle of natural law are known as naturalists while those who believe in the principle of legal positivism or ‘positive law’ are known as positivists. This is a brief overview of the two principles of

Throughout the course of this essay, I will first define what Aquinas means by incorporating the claim that “an unjust law is no law at all”. This will include defining important terms that will correspond with evaluating Aquinas’ claim.

In this paper, I will argue that morality lies with and within the individual, thus no law or laws can determine what is inherent to a person’s true nature. The law is to be unbiased and or blind and should never consider individual morality when casting a judgement. Individual morality would require everyone to maintain the same moral code which cannot be legally enforced and would create a circular reasoning of which no society could not escape. Maintaining the same moral code would deny freewill. Therefore, a judge could not deny Elmer Palmer his inheritance because he would be making a decision based on his/her moral beliefs.

This paper will demonstrate how Hart’s account of the relationship between law and morality shows an understanding of how they both work together yet can also work as separate entities. It will take a specific look into the internal point of view to aid the understanding of why

In this essay I will develop one reason for thinking Berger has failed to establish that the rule of law is a cultural value that seeks to maintain its supremacy over other cultural values. I begin with an outline of Berger’s argument, focusing on his idea that the rule of law is a cultural value. I then argue his position fails to establish that the rule of law is a cultural value that has authority over other cultural values.

To what degree are natural law theorists and positivist theorists accurate in terms of the idea that ‘an unjust law cannot be a valid law’? In this essay i will assess the accuracy of this statement and attempt to define the concept of the validity of law in relation to both natural law theorists and positivist theorists. For the purpose of this essay I will define validity of a law as ”Having legal force; effective or binding” (The Free Dictionary). The main reason for the continual debate between both theories is that they are both very similar although they may appear to be at contrary ends of each spectrum. Natural law theorists believe that in order for a law to be valid it must have some moral principle therefore if laws which are enacted in statues have no authority, they are not moral. Whereas positivists support and emphasise the importance of a division between morality and law.

This article discusses the conceptions of legal normativity, both moral and “strictly legal” conceptions. According to Spaak, regarding the normative force of legal justification, legal positivists can still embrace the moral idea and not be in conflict with their generally held belief in the “strictly legal” concept of law. In Torben Spaak’s opinion, there is a reason to desire legal positivism; he explains this through introducing the concept of jurisprudence. When discussing the nature of law, Spaak states, “that while the moral conception is what is likely favored on a smaller scale, the strictly legal conception is more appealing because it is broader,” (478). Spaak is arguing, his belief that “validity-based explanations come nearer to the truth,”(483) rather than belief-based explanations. He concludes that we are to prefer legal positivism over natural law theory. “That is why in this article I have been concerned with the law itself rather than our views about it.”(483)

In this paper, I will propose that it is better to look at whether a law is legally valid or not through the perspective of natural law theory as opposed to positivist theory. My argument consists mostly of the language of “improvement” which can only exist based on the theory of natural law which states that law is something which has an objective truth behind it. Only when there is an objective mark to hit can there be hits and misses and I believe that positivism disregards the possibility of hits and misses entirely. So, my argument is that it makes more sense to consider legal validity of a law from the perspective of natural law rather than positive law because it includes not only the previously set up legal system when considering validity, but it also considers the general idea of some kind of morality as well. A sub argument is that the starting legal system must have had some basis by which to have been created and accepted which must be some form or notion of morality.