The High Court—Where Now?

A COUPLE OF YEARS AGO, CBS sent Eric Sevareid around to interview Hugo Black in the Justice’s home on Lee Street in Old Town, Alexandria. In the course of their hour’s conversation, the talk got around to the Supreme Court’s landmark decision of 1954 in the school segregation cases. Sevareid threw the old gentleman a hanging curve.

Some sixty years earlier, Sevareid recalled, the Court had found it constitutional for the states to maintain segregated schools. In 1954, however, the Court had found the practice unconstitutional. Sevareid rubbed a little spit on the ball: “The Constitution hadn’t changed in the meanwhile, had it?”

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James Jackson Kilpatrick

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A COUPLE OF YEARS AGO, CBS sent Eric Sevareid around to interview Hugo Black in the Justice’s home on Lee Street in Old Town, Alexandria. In the course of their hour’s conversation, the talk got around to the Supreme Court’s landmark decision of 1954 in the school segregation cases. Sevareid threw the old gentleman a hanging curve.

Some sixty years earlier, Sevareid recalled, the Court had found it constitutional for the states to maintain segregated schools. In 1954, however, the Court had found the practice unconstitutional. Sevareid rubbed a little spit on the ball: “The Constitution hadn’t changed in the meanwhile, had it?”