Is Right the New Left?
An Analysis of Justice Clarence Thomas’s Concurring Opinion In the Seattle and Louisville Cases
By Kendra Hamilton
Just over a month after the Supreme Court of the United States’ ruling in the Seattle and Louisville cases, news analysts and school district officials from Boston to Berkeley, Calif., from Knoxville, Tenn., to Evanston, Ill., are still trying to assess its impact on their student reassignment programs.
But the community of scholars seems to be riveted by an aspect of the case that has yet to draw much attention: the ironic role played by two touchstone cases, Plessy v. Ferguson of 1896 and Brown v. Board of Education of 1954.
“Who betrayed the legacy of Brown v. Board of Education?” is how legal blogger Michael C. Dorf — an author and the Isidor and Seville Sulzbacher Professor of Law at Columbia University — frames the question.
For the community of civil rights lawyers and scholars, the answer to that question is clear. People are saying, “This decision, in some ways, is like Bakke all over again, but even worse, even more restrictive,” says Anita S. Earls, director of advocacy for the University of North Carolina’s Center for Civil Rights.
