{"id":7222,"date":"2009-09-29T20:37:38","date_gmt":"2009-09-30T01:37:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=7222"},"modified":"2009-09-29T20:37:38","modified_gmt":"2009-09-30T01:37:38","slug":"brown-v-board-of-education-as-a-disputing-process-lesson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2009\/09\/brown-v-board-of-education-as-a-disputing-process-lesson\/","title":{"rendered":"Brown v. Board of Education as a Disputing Process Lesson"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"supremeLast week, we were privileged to hear Professor Michael Klarman speak on “Why Brown\u00a0v. Board of Education<\/em> Was a Hard Case.”\u00a0 This was one of the most enjoyable and interesting talks I have heard in a long time.\u00a0 I highly recommend it, and you can click here <\/span><\/a>to get the webcast.\u00a0 My guess is that this would still be as funny and insightful on the audio.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0There were two particular points that he made in reviewing the history of the case that linked to conflict resolution theory that I want to highlight here.<\/p>\n

First,\u00a0Klarman noted that, contrary to typical practice, the justices facing the Brown<\/em> decision did not<\/em> take a straw poll at their first conference discussing the case.\u00a0 In fact, as he notes, by his count, there would have been only\u00a0four votes to overturn Plessy<\/em> at the beginning and nothing near the unanimity that the Court presented in its decision the following year.\u00a0 What was the import of not <\/em>taking this poll?\u00a0 As Klarman notes, this allowed the justices to change their mind and to preserve fluidity in their thinking.\u00a0 In other words, the justices did not lock themselves into an opening position that then they would feel necessary to defend throughout the discussions.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The impact of publicly locking yourself in to an opening position is problematic, as we know.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

We see this in client counseling, when clients lock themselves into a perceived position from which we often must counsel them to see a different reality.\u00a0 We see this in litigation, where, as Michael Moffitt has written<\/span><\/a>, the complaint and response locks disputing parties into extremes.\u00a0 And we see this in mediation, where the mediator often must perform reality testing so that clients and their counsel can gracefully change their position.\u00a0\u00a0 It\u2019s pretty amazing to realize that the outcome of Brown<\/em> (and arguably the path of\u00a0civil rights following it)\u00a0happened because somebody thought carefully\u00a0about the process used.<\/p>\n

A second interesting note in the Brown<\/em> case was\u00a0Justice Black\u2019s importance to the case and his role reversal \u2013 his ability to truly understand white Southerners in a way that no other\u00a0justice could.\u00a0 Black was the only justice from the Deep South, a former KKK member, and the justice who knew best that segregation was based on the opinion that blacks were inferior (and\u00a0not the professed justification of segregation serving both populations equally).\u00a0\u00a0 Because\u00a0Justice Black could, better than anyone else, dismiss the arguments from the Deep South, he could carry more weight with his colleagues on this point.<\/p>\n

Finally, one last irony.\u00a0\u00a0One of the most hilarious aspects of Professor Klarman\u2019s talk was hearing from him\u00a0exactly how much this collection of justices disliked one another.\u00a0 I won\u2019t do the speech justice to only give one tidbit but here is one I loved:\u00a0 When there was a particularly untalented lawyer in front of the court, Justice Douglas apparently used to bait Justice Frankfurter by sending a note to him that Douglas had heard this lawyer received one of the highest grades in Frankfurter\u2019s classes at law school.\u00a0 It is ironic that the members of this Court, who stunningly disdained one another at best, were able to reach a unanimous decision in this momentous case.<\/p>\n

Cross posted at Indisputably<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week, we were privileged to hear Professor Michael Klarman speak on “Why Brown\u00a0v. Board of Education Was a Hard Case.”\u00a0 This was one of the most enjoyable and interesting talks I have heard in a long time.\u00a0 I highly recommend it, and you can click here to get the webcast.\u00a0 My guess is that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[64,46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-legal-history","category-speakers","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7222"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7222\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}