Recommended Citation
Matthew Coles,
Taking the Name Brown in Vain: Separate But Equal, Brown and the Harvard Case, 22
U.C. L.J. Race & Econ. Just.
47
(2025).
Available at: https://repository.uclawsf.edu/faculty_scholarship/2147
Publication Date
2025
Abstract
Bad history in legal opinions is understandable, if most of the time not excusable. Bad legal analysis in Supreme Court opinions is not. Judges are not trained historians. They are trained lawyers. They should know how to do law. This essay is about bad lawyering at the Court. Specifically, this essay is about the shoddy misuse of Brown v. Board of Education, the canonical case in which the Supreme Court finally began to use the 14th Amendment to protect Black people, in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard.
Document Type
Article
Publication Title
UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice