Court opening a time of trepidation

Cincinnati.com
October 4, 2009
By Judge Nathaniel R. Jones


Since at least the late 1940s, I have been among those Supreme Court watchers who anxiously await the opening of the fall term of the court. My early interest was whetted by the World War II and post-World War II issues that were making their way to the front pages of newspapers and to the court's docket.
In 1944, in the midst of that war, the NAACP's top lawyers, Thurgood Marshall and William Hastie, persuaded the Supreme Court to strike down the Texas White Primary law.
A number of educational cases worked their way up to the Supreme Court, setting the stage for the historic 1954 decision in Brown vs. Board of Education.
Thus, a series of decisions between 1944 and 1954, capped by Brown vs. Board of Education, removed the legal underpinnings of racial segregation. That set the nation on the road of correcting the demeaning social distortions that our courts had been enforcing against black Americans.
That journey is not yet complete, even with the election of a black president.
This year, I am again watching the Supreme Court as it begins its 2009 term.
The historic presence on the bench of a woman of color, a Latina, Sonia Sotomayor, will be exciting in and of itself. But of added significance is the dignity she showed in navigating the torrents of her confirmation.
As the term unfolds, there is one case that may likely provide an opportunity for the conservative majority hell-bent on slamming shut the doors to the federal courts to victims of racial discrimination. In the case of Lewis vs. City of Chicago, 6,000 blacks who were found to have been discriminated against were denied relief because the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals said that they were too late in filing their claims. I am among those who fear that the result may be preordained.
In the last two sessions of the court, particularly since the departure of Justice Sandra Day O'Conner, the court majority, in its decisions on school desegregation in the Louisville and Seattle cases, has embraced a jurisprudence that places racial remedies on life support. Its holding last term on voting rights and affirmative action showed that Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Clarence Thomas are poised to lead the conservative majority to pulling the plug, thus killing enforcement of remedies when race is the issue.

Full Story: http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20091004/EDIT03/910040349/1019/EDIT/Court+opening+a+time+of+trepidation