Douglas Corporation secure contracts to build aircraft in China. The liberal Committee for Economic Organizing complained that he was “promoting companies, not jobs.” But scandals nearly sank Brown. In 1993, during Brown’s first year as secretary of commerce, a Vietnamese businessman alleged that Brown had accepted a $700,000 bribe from the government of Vietnam to remove a long- standing trade EMBARGO. Brown denied the charge; the FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION conducted a year-long probe, and he was ultimately cleared. By late 1994 rumors spread in the press that he would resign to run Clinton’s reelection campaign. In February 1995, new allegations emerged. U.S. attorney general JANET RENO opened another criminal probe into Brown’s personal finances. This time, congressional Republicans accused him of violating disclosure requirements and evad- ing taxes. Brown again denied any violation of law, but Republican critics began calling for his dismissal—as well as the elimination of the Department of Commerce itself, which they called irrelevant and outdated. In May 1995 fourteen Repub lican senators told Attorney General Reno that fairness required that the probe be conducted outside of the Clinton administration. Reno agreed; she requested the appointment of an INDEPENDENT COUNSEL to examine Brown’s finances. Particularly trou- bling was one odd-looking busines s deal: Brown had earned nearly $500,000 from selling his interest in a firm in which he had never invested. Brown won high regard for his work in the law. He was the recipient of two American Jurisprudence awards for outstanding achieve- ment in jurisprudence and for outstanding scholastic achievement in poverty law. He served as a trustee of Middlebury College, and as a board member of both the United Negro College Fund and the University of the District of Columbia. He was a fellow of the Institute of Politics, at the JOHN F. KENNEDY School of Government, at Harvard University. On April 3, 1996, Brown was killed in a plane crash near the city of Dubrovnik, Croatia, with thirty-two other COMMERCE DEPARTMENT officials and U.S. business executives. They had planned to explore investment opportu- nities for the reconstruction of Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. FURTHER READINGS Brown, Tracey L. 1998. The Life and Times of Ron Brown: A Memoir. New York: Morrow. Holmes, Steven A. 2000. Ron Brown: An Uncommon Life. Indianapolis: Wiley. Lynk, Myles V. “Ron Brown Remembered” 1996. The Washington Lawyer 10 (May–June). BROWN V. BOARD OF EDUCATION OF TOPEKA, KANSAS Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483, 47 S. Ct. 686, 98 L. Ed. 873, was the most significant of a series of judicial decisions overturning SEGREGATION laws—laws that separate whites and blacks. Reversing its 1896 decision in PLESSY V. FERGUSON, 163 U.S. 537, 16 S. Ct. 1138, 41 L. Ed. 256, which established the “separate-but-equal” doctrine that found racial segregation to be constitutional, the Court unanimously decided in Brown that laws separating children by race in different schools violated the EQUAL PROTECTION Clause of the FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT,which provides that “[n]o state shall deny to any person the equal protection of the laws.” In making its decision, the Court declared that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” Moreover, the Court found that segregated schools promote in African American children a harmful and irreparable sense of inferiority that damages not only their lives but the welfare of U.S. society as a whole. The principle expressed in Brown was used in later decis ions of the Supreme Court and lower federal courts to reverse segregation in other fields as well. By the end of the 1960s, laws that had required racial segregation in buses, trains, bathrooms, and other public places had been overturned, as had many other laws that obstructed the rights of African Americans. Brown thus served as a milestone in the struggle of African Americans to gain equal CIVIL RIGHTS in U.S. society. It also symbolized the judicial activism of the Supreme Court under Chief Justice EARL WARREN, who would go on to lead the Court until 1969 in a remarkable era of change with regard to civil rights. Brown was actually the culmination of a decades-long struggle by both African Amer- icans and sympathetic whites against segrega- tion and other discriminatory laws. Though it is a given in the early 2000s that persons of all races should enjoy equality under the law in the United States, that has not been the case for most of the country’s history. Even after the GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3RD E DITION 148 BROWN V. BOARD OF EDUCATION OF TOPEKA, KANSAS Civil War had ended and the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments had outlawed SLAVERY and guaranteed the civil rights of “all persons born or naturalized in the United States” (U.S. Const. amend. XIV), southern states and localities established the racially discriminatory Jim Crow laws—also known as the Black Codes—to keep African Americans from enjoy- ing legal equality with whites. The term Jim Crow derives from a popular minstrel song of the nineteenth century. These laws made it difficult or impossible for African Americans to vote, made it illegal for them to use the same public facilities as whites, restricted their travel, forbade interracial MARRIAGE,and otherwise attempted to keep African Americans in a state of dependence and inferiority with regard to whites. Most of these laws were passed after the RECONSTRUCTION period following the Civil War, when the MILITARY OCCUPATION of the South had ended and the radical wing of the REPUBLICAN PARTY, which under President ABRAHAM LINCOLN had been instrumental in dismantling slavery, had declined in power. By the mid-1870s southern whites were again in political control of their region, and many quickly sought to return blacks to a position of legal inferiority through passage of discriminatory laws. In 1896 the legal standing of the JIM CROW LAWS was strengthened when, in Plessy v. Ferguson, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of a Louisiana statute requiring blacks and whites to occupy separate railway cars. The law in question, according to the Court, was not a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amend- ment as long as the facilities provided for each race were SEPARATE BUT EQUAL. Moreover, the Court voiced its disagreement with attempts to challenge segregation laws and with the ideas critics of segregation used to support those challenges. For example, in its opinion, the Court considered it a “fallacy” that “the enforced SEPARATION of the two races stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority,” and it scoffed at the notion that “social prejudices may be overcome by legislation.” Ironically, the Court reinforce d its decision to uphold the legality of segregation on rail cars by noting the existence of laws “requiring separate schools for colored children.” The Plessy deci- sion and its separate-but-equal doctrine were later used to uphold segregation in public schools and other public facilities. African Americans and others who sympa- thized with their cause were bitterly disappoint- ed by the Plessy decision. Over a decade later, in 1909, some blacks and whites joined together to form the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ( NAACP), which would eventually coordinate a successful legal challenge to the Plessy ruling. The NAACP brought together people of all races in an effort to improve the situation of people of color. Although the NAACP achieved some victories in the fight against Jim Crow laws in the first two decades of its existence, it was not until 1935 that the organization began actively to mount a campaign against segregation in schools. It did so assisted by legal counsels CHARLES HOUSTON and WILLIAM H. HASTIE, and a young assistant, THURGOOD MARSHALL, who would go on to be a member of the Supreme Court from 1967 to 1991. By 1939 Marshall had become head of the NAACP legal branch, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and by the early 1950s he and his organization had argued and secured significant legal victories before the Supreme Court that helped set the stage for Brown. In Sweatt v. Painter, 339 U.S. 629, 70 S. Ct. 848, 94 L. Ed. 1114 (1950), the Court sided with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund when it ruled that a separate law school for blacks in Texas could Three attorneys in Brown v. Board of Ed.: (l-r) George E.C. Hayes, Thurgood Marshall, and James M. Nabrit, on May 17, 1954, the day the Court issued its ruling. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3 RD E DITION BROWN V. BOARD OF EDUCATION OF TOPEKA, KANSAS 149 not provide an education equal to that available to whites at the more established University of Texas Law School. And in another case brought by Marshall’s organization, McLaurin v. Okla- homa State Regents, 339 U.S. 637, 70 S. Ct. 851, 94 L. Ed. 1149 (1950), the Court ruled that separate library and lecture hall seats for a single black graduate student were a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. However, neither case addressed the separate-but-equal doctrine of Plessy. In 1952 Marshall and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund brought two more significant cases to the Supreme Court: Bolling v. Sharpe, 347 U.S. 497, 74 S. Ct. 693, 98 L. Ed. 884 (1954), which dealt with racial segregation of schools in the District of Columbia, and Brown, which was actually a consolidation of four CLASS ACTION suits (suits brought to court on behalf of a group of peop le) from federal district courts in Delaware, Kansas, South Carolina, and Virginia. The NAACP Legal Defense Fund brought the cases to court on behalf of African American children who were refused admission to schools attended by white children as a result of laws allowing or requiring racial segregation in schools. The PLAINTIFF named in the case, Oliver Brown, had a daughter, Linda Brown, who had been denied admission to an all-white elementary school in Topeka, Kansas, because she was black. In all but the Delaware case, a three-judge federal district court had decided against the African American children and in favor of the school districts, citing as precedent the Plessy separate-but-equal doctrine. In the Delaware case, the state supreme court also upheld this doctrine but ordered that black children be sent to superior white schools until schools provided for blacks could be improved to an equal condition. Brown was argued before the Court in 1952 and reargued in 1953. Marshall, in making his statement before the Court, argued that the statutes in question in this case were equivalent to the BLACK CODES. He pointed out the con tradictions in allowing blacks and whites to vote in the same places and attend the same COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES,butnot allowing black and white children to attend the same elementary schools. He also maintained that a decision in favor of segregation would effectively be a decision to keep African Americans as near as possible to their former state of slavery. According to Marshall, such a decision would be equivalent to saying that “Negroes are inferior to all other human beings.” JOHN W. DAVIS, who was legal counsel for the state of South Carolina, argued in his closing remarks that the state had honored Plessy’s separate-but-equal doctrine through large investments in schools for black students. He claimed that the state had the intention of creating a condition of equality for children of all races and that “the happiness, the progress and the welfare of these children is best promoted in segregated schools.” He also maintained that it was not within the jurisdic- tion of the U.S. Supreme Court to decide how the state of South Carolina conducted its school system. He told the Court: Your Honors do not sit, and cannot sit as a glorified Board of Education for the State of South Carolina or any other state Neither this Court nor any other court can sit in the chairs of the legislature of South Carolina and mold its educational system, and if it is found to be in its present form unacceptable, the State of South Carolina must devise the alternative. On the same day that the Court handed down its decision in Brown, it decided the related case of Bolling. Applying the same principles that it had used in Brown, the Court ruled in Bolling that racial segregation of schoolchildren in the District of Columbia was unconstitutional. Spottswood Bolling and his mother, Sarah, read the newspaper report of the ruling in Bolling v. Sharpe (1954), which declared school segregation in the District of Columbia unconstitutional. BETTMANN/CORBIS. GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3 RD E DITION 150 BROWN V. BOARD OF EDUCATION OF TOPEKA, KANSAS In the following year, the Supreme Court on reargument made another decision in Brown that was designed to establish the methodology by which to enforce desegregation of public schools. Brown II, 349 U.S. 294, 75 S. Ct. 753, 99 L. Ed. 1083 (1955), as it has come to be called, determined that school authorities had the principal responsibility for evaluating and solving local educational problems, including those resulting from segregation. The Court decided to remand (send back) the individual cases in Brown to lower courts in order that those courts might better assess the efforts of school authorities to desegregate the public schools and thereby provide to African Ameri- can children their equal protection under the laws as promised by the Fourteenth Amend- ment. The lower courts were directed to take into account any problems concerning school administration, facilities, transportation, and personnel, and to consider any revision of local laws necessary to resolve the problems and achieve desegregation. Brown v. Board of Education dealt only with government-mandated or government- authorized segregation. It did not apply to racial segregation or discrimination related to restau- rants, theaters, employment, country clubs, or other parts of the private sector. However, Brown fostered changes in the legal and moral outlook of the country that greatly aided future efforts to end racial discrimination as related to employment, housing, and places of public accommodation, and thus greatly affected U.S. race relations. Despite the promise of Brown, desegregation of U.S. schools proceeded slowly. In the years immediately following the decision, many south- ern school districts resisted or delayed imple- mentation of its desegregation requirements, thereby forcing the Supreme Court and other lower courts to oversee and supervise school administrative functions in many localities. As time went on and southern schools became more INTEGRATED, the Court shifted its focus to school districts all over the country, particularly those in cities. In the second half of the twentieth century, many African Americans moved from rural to urban areas, often in the northern states. School districts in many of those urban areas became separated into suburban white districts and urban black districts. In response to this challenge, courts imposed busing requirements during the 1970s: in the interest of creating more racially balanced schools, children were bused to different schools that were sometimes far from their home neighborhoods. In many cities, busing became highly controversial. By the late 1980s, legal battles surrounding the legacy of the Brown decision changed when some school districts began to request that they be released from the court supervision of their operations that had been required by Brown. Accordingly, the Supreme Court began to focus on the issue of when a court order to desegregate a school district should be dissolved and autonomy returned to the local school officials and community. In Board of Education v. Dowell, 498 U.S. 237, 111 S. Ct. 630, 112 L. Ed. 2d 715 (1991), which dealt with a court- imposed desegregation plan in Oklahoma City, the Court ruled that a court-ordered desegrega- tion decree may be dissolved when a school district shows that it has taken all “practicable” steps to end a state-imposed dual school system and demonstrates that it is unlikely to revert to its former ways. The ability to dissolve a court- ordered desegregation plan, the Court’s opinion stated, would enable a school district that had attempted to achieve the goal of desegregation to avoid “judicial tutelage for the indefinite future.” Justice Marshall, now near the end of his career on the Court, dissented from the majority opinion in Dowell. He argued that, given the long history of segregation, it was too early to leave the Oklahoma City school district to its own devices. Though he agreed that perpetual federal judicial supervision of local schools had never been envisioned by the Court, he feared that the Court’s decision in this case would simply perpetuate an already unsatisfac- tory standard of INTEGRATION in the Oklahoma City school district and in other school districts. In another case, Freeman v. Pitts, 503 U.S. 467, 112 S. Ct. 1430, 118 L. Ed. 2d 108 (1992), the Supreme Court held that district courts may relinquish supervision and control of school districts in incremental stages, before full compliance has been achieved in every facet of school operations. The Court also ruled that once a school district corrects any racial imbalance that violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, the district has no obligation to remedy a later imbalance caused by population shifts. GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3RD E DITION BROWN V. BOARD OF EDUCATION OF TOPEKA, KANSAS 151 As these cases indicate, the issue of desegrega- tion of public schools remained a vital public issue even several decades after the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown. As a meansofboth training and socialization, education is still a necessity for U.S. society as a whole and for any individual in particular, and it is expected to remain so in the future. Guided by Brown, the U.S. judicial system has decisively concluded that the constitutional provision of equal protection under the laws guarantees that children be entitled to an equal, not a separate, public education. FURTHER READINGS Balkin, Jack M., et al, eds., 2001. What Brown v. Board of Education Should Have Said: The Nation’s Top Legal Experts Rewrite America’s Landmark Civil Rights Deci- sion. New York: New York Univ. Press. Hunt, James L. 2001. “Brown v. Board of Education after Fifty Years: Context and Synopsis.” Mercer Law Review 52 (winter). Oliver Brown and the NAACP A B s the man whose name appeared in the title of perhaps the most influential U.S. Supreme Court decision ever, Brown v. Board of Education, 347U.S.483,74S.Ct.686,98L.Ed.873(1954),Oliver Brown was an unlikely hero for the civil rights movement. The African American welder, war veteran, and assistant pastor was a quiet, upstand- ing citizen of Topeka, Kansas, who had never been known to publicly oppose discrimination against his race. However, he took a decisive stand against racial discrimination when he joined one dozen other African American parents in f iling suit for the right of their children to attend the elementary schools of Tope ka alongside white child ren. Brown’s participation in the lawsuit was encour- aged by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which provided necessary legal expertise and organization for the case. Long familiar with the practice of school segregation in Topeka and many other school districts, NAACP lawyers approached Brown and other parents in the summer of 1950 to see if they would join them in a case that challenged that practice. It was precisely Oliver Brown’s modest qual ities that made the NAACP cho ose him as a plaintiff. His reputation for integrity could help mute criticism in a controversial case that stirred up angry emotions in both the white and black commun ities of Top eka. The city’swhitemajoritywaslargely content to remain with a school system that maintained eighteen all-white elementary schools and four all-black elementary schools. African Americans, meanwhile, feared the case would cause the white community to attack what few civil rights they already possessed. Others could not become involved in such a controversy without the fear of losing their jobs with white employers. For that reason, very few African Americans in Topeka actually belonged to the NAACP. Like many other African American parents, Brown was upset that his daughter had to travel a long distance to an all-black school when an all- white school was located much nearer their home. He also could not help but notice that the all-white schools were in better repair than the all-black schools. Brown agreed to join in the NAACP’scase, and in September 1950 he tried unsuccessfully to register one of his three daughters, Linda Brown, i n an all-white school only seven bloc ks from their house. When the case first came to the U.S. District Court for Kansas in June 1951, Brown testified that his daughter had to travel twenty-one blocks to an all-black school, part of the way through a dangerous railroad switching yard. In the end, African Americans did not seek to end the s ystem of segregation in public schools merely to have their children travel fewer miles to class or sit in ni cer buildings. At stake were much more important issues that affected their status in U.S. society. As expressed by NAACP attorneys in later testimony before the Supreme Court, African Americans had come to see segregated schools as inherently unequal. These schools relegated A frican Americans t o an inferior class, instilled feelings of insecurity, diminished their opportunities, and retarded their mental development. The victory eventually achieved in Brown wouldgoalong way toward eliminating those harmful effects of segregation and guaranteeing African Americans their full c onstitutional rights. GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3RD E DITION 152 BROWN V. BOARD OF EDUCATION OF TOPEKA, KANSAS Irons, Peter H. 2004. Jim Crow’s Children: The Broken Promise of the Brown Decision. New York: Penguin. Klein, Dora W. 2002. “Beyond Brown v. Board of Education: The Need to Remedy the Achievement Gap.” The Journal of Law and Education. 31 (October). Kluger, Richard. 2004. Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America’s Struggle for Equality. New York: Vintage. Levine, Ellen, ed. 2000. Freedom’s Children: Young Civil Rights Activists Tell Their Own Stories. New York: Putnam Juvenile. Patterson, James T. 2005. Brown v. Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and Its Troubled Legacy. New York: Oxford Univ. Press. Pollack, Jack. 1979. Earl Warren: The Judge Who Changed America. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. Weinberg, Meyer. 1967. Race and Place: A Legal History of the Neighborhood School. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Dept. of Health, Education, and Welfare. Wells, Amy Stuart, and Lamar P. Miller, eds. 2005. Brown Plus Thirty: Perspectives on Desegregation. New York: Metropolitan Center for Educational Research, New York Univ. Press. Whitman, Mark, ed. 1993. Removing a Badge of Slavery: The Record of Brown v. Board of Education. Princeton, NJ: Marcus Wiener. Wilkinson, J. Harvie III. 1979. From Brown to Bakke: The Supreme Court and School Integration, 1954–1978. New York: Oxford Univ. Press. CROSS REFERENCES “Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas” (Appendix, Primary Document); Civil Rights; Discrimina- tion; Equal Protection; Jim Crow Laws; Marshall, Thur- good; NAACP; Republican Party; School Desegregation; Warren, Earl; Warren Court. v BROWN, WALTER FOLGER Walter Folger Brown was born May 31, 1869, in Massillon, Ohio. He received a bachelor of arts degree from Harvard University in 1892 and attended Harvard Law Sch ool from 1893 to 1894. Brown practiced law from 1894 to 1927 and entered politics in 1921, serving for three years as chairman of the Congressional Joint Committee on Reorganization. In 1927 he became assistant secretary of COMMERCE, and two years later performed the duties of U.S. postmaster general, acting in this capacity until 1933. Brown’s interests and activities in business were numerous and included service as presi- dent and chairman of the board of the Hudson and Manhattan Railroad Company. Brown died January 26, 1961, in Toledo, Ohio. v BROWNELL, HERBERT, JR. Herbert Brownell Jr. was the 65th attorney general of the United States. He served from 1953 to 1957 in the administration of President DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER. Brownell’s tenure as attorney general was marked by his ADVOCACY of CIVIL RIGHTS, particularly concerning the enforcement of the landmark case BROWN V. BOARD OF EDUCATION, 347 U.S. 483, 74 S. Ct. 686, 98 L. Ed. 873 (1954) in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of desegregation of public schools. Brownell also proposed landmark civil rights legislation. Brownell was born in Peru, Nebraska, on February 20, 1904. In 1924, he graduated from the University of Nebraska and then attended Yale Law School. After receiving his law degree in 1927, Brownell was admitted to the New York State bar and worked for the noted law firm of Root, Clark, Buckner, Howland & Ballentine for two years. In 1929, he joined the law firm of Lord, Day & Lord. Brownell served as a member of the New York State Assembly from 1933 to 1937, becoming an advisor to THOMAS E. DEWEY, a New York DISTRICT ATTORNEY who had successfully prosecuted Walter Folger Brown 1869–1961 ▼▼ ▼▼ 18501850 19001900 19251925 19501950 19751975 18751875 ❖ ◆◆ ◆ ◆❖ 1861–65 U.S. Civil War 1869 Born, Massillon, Ohio 1892 Received B.A. from Harvard University 1894 Began practicing law 1906–12 Served as chairman of the Ohio Republican Central Committee 1914–18 World War I 1921 Appointed chair of the Congressional Joint Committee on Reorganization 1927 Appointed assistant secretary of commerce 1939–45 World War II 1933–46 Served as president and chairman of the board of the Hudson and Manhattan Railroad Company 1929–33 Served as U.S. postmaster general 1950–53 Korean War 1961 Died, Toledo, Ohio 1961–73 Vietnam War BROWNELL, HERBERT, JR. 153 GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3RD E DITION organized-crime syndicates. Dewey had run for governor in 1938 but lost to INCUMBENT Herbert Lehman. Dewey also made an unsuccessful bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 1940. Brownell urged Dewey to run again for governor in 1942. With Brownell as his campaign manager and chief political strategist, Dewey was elected governor of New York. With Brownell managing his campaign, Dewey ran again for president in 1944, only to lose to FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT. Having gained national prominence, Brownell served as chairman of the Republican National Commit- tee from 1944 to 1946. He also functioned once more as the presidential campaign manager for Dewey, who h ad been re-elected governor in 1946. In 1948 HARRY TRUMAN narrowly defeated Dewey. In 1952 Brownell encouraged WORLD WAR II hero General Dwight D. Eisenhower to run for president. Brownell helped the general to secure the Republican nomination and then worked closely with him in his successful run for the presidency. In 1953 a gratefu l Eisenhower appointed Brownell as U.S. attorney general. Brownell was an influential advisor to the president and was involved in numerous contro- versial situations. Shortly after his appointment as attorney general, Brownell became involved in the case of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who had been convicted of ESPIONAGE and sentenced to death. Supporters of the Rosenbergs, who had exhausted all their appeals, petitioned the president to commute their sentences to life IMPRISONMENT.In June 1953, U.S. Supreme Court Justice WILLIAM O. DOUGLAS granted the Rosenbergs a stay of execu- tion in order to consider new evidence. Although the U.S. Supreme Court was recessed for the summer, Brownell convinced the justices to come back and hear the matter. The Court, in a special session on June 19, 1953, dissolved the stay, and the Rosenbergs were executed that same day. Brownell raised the ire of many Southerners (as well as anti-integration forces throughout the country) when he used the JUSTICE DEPART- MENT to enforce the mandate of the Brown case in desegregating public schools in the South. The climax came when Arkansas Governor Orville Faubus ordered the state’s NATIONAL GUARD to bar black students who were seeking admittance to a high school in Little Rock. Eisenhower, at Brownell’s urging, federalized the troops and used them to escort the students to and from the school. Herbert Brownell Jr. CORBIS. ▼▼ ▼▼ Herbert Brownell Jr. 1904–1996 19001900 19501950 19751975 20002000 19251925 ❖ ◆ ❖ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ 1904 Born, Peru, Nebraska 1914–18 World War I 1927 Received LL.B. from Yale Univ.; admitted to N.Y. bar 1933–37 Served in N.Y. State Assembly 1953–57 Served as U.S. attorney general 1957 Became U.S. member of Permanent Court of Arbitration at the Hague 1996 Died, New York City 1964 Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision held racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional 1953 Julius and Ethel Rosenberg executed by U.S. government for espionage 154 BROWNELL, HERBERT, JR. GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3RD E DITION Brownell, who had been a civil rights supporter since his days in the New York State legislature, drafted legislation that would give the U.S. attorney general unprecedented power to institute suits in the name of the United States to enforce civil rights in many public accommodations includin g housin g, parks, theaters, restaurants, and hotels. The legislation, called the Brownell Bill, also sought the power to enforce injunctions to stop violations of civil rights in the same areas. The bill went through numerous permutations and ended up being greatly weakened in its enforcement efforts. Nevertheless, it w as passed as the Civil Rights Act of 1957—the first civil rights legislation passed in 82 years. After leaving his post as attorney general in 1957, Brownell served as the United States’ member to the Permanent Court of ARBITRATION at the Hague. He remained associated with the Lord law firm from 1977 to 1989. From 1985 to 1989 he served as a member of the U.S. Bicentennial Commission for the U.S. Consti- tution. In 1993 he published Advising Ike: The Memoirs of Attorney General Herbert Brownell. Brownell died in New York City on May 1, 1996. FURTHER READINGS Brownell, Herbert, with John P. Burke. 1993. Advising Ike: The Memoirs of Attorney General Herbert Brownell. Lawrence: Univ. Press of Kansas. Caro, Robert. 2003. Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson. New York: Vintage. Justice Department. 1985. Attorneys General of the United States, 1789–1985. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office. Available online at http://www.usdoj. gov/ag/attygeneraldate.html; website home page: http:// www.usdoj.gov (accessed July 8, 2009). v BROWNING, JAMES ROBERT James Robert Browning, a federal judge, is credited with holding the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit together at a time when there was enormous pressure to split the nation’s largest and busiest circuit into smaller, more manageable units. Browning’s innova- tions in JUDICIAL ADMINISTRATION demonstrated that the federal courts, despite ever-increasing caseloads, could continue to provide speedy and effective justice. During his tenure, the Ninth CIRCUIT COURT, which oversees justice in nine western states and two Pacific territories, grew from a nine-judge panel to a 28-judge tribunal that managed more than 5,500 appeals a year in the late 1980s. Browning was born in Great Falls, Montana, on October 1, 1918. He grew up in and attended the public schools of Belt, Montana, a small town east of Great Falls, where his father was a blacksmith and, later, owner of the town’s Ford dealership. Browning completed his undergrad- uate work at the University of Montana and entered that university’s law school in 1938, becoming editor in chief of the LAW REVIEW and graduating with honors in 1941. After gradua- tion, he joined the Antitrust Division of the JUSTICE DEPARTMENT in Washington, D.C. Two years later, he was inducted as a private into the U.S. Army Infantry. He served in military intelligence in the Pacific theater for three years, attaining the rank of first lieutenant and winning a Bronze Star. Following WORLD WAR II, Browning returned to the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division, first in Washington, D.C., and then in Seattle, Washington. In 1948, at the age of 30, he was ▼▼ ▼▼ James Robert Browning 1918– 1905 1950 1975 2000 1925 ❖ 1961–73 Vietnam War 1950–53 Korean War 1939–45 World War II 1914–18 World War I 1918 Born, Great Falls, Mont. ◆ ◆ ◆◆ ◆ ◆◆◆◆ ◆◆ 2000 Assumed senior status as Ninth Circuit Judge 1988 Stepped down as chief judge, but remained active as circuit judge 1985 Administration of Justice in a Large Appellate Court—The Ninth Circuit Innovations Project published 1976 Named chief judge of the Ninth Circuit 1969–71 Served on U.S. Judicial Conference’s committee on judicial administration 1961 Appointed circuit judge to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit by Pres. Kennedy 1958 Appointed clerk of U.S. Supreme Court 1952 Appointed executive assistant to the U.S. attorney general 1948 Appointed chief of the Northwest Regional Office of the Antitrust Division 1943 Joined U.S. Army Infantry 1941 Joined U.S. Justice Dept.’s Antitrust Division 2005 Ninth Circuit courthouse named in his honor THE NINTH CIRCUIT IS THE ONLY COURT IN WHICH , WITHIN OUR BOUNDARIES , IS REPRESENTED ALL THE POINTS OF VIEW , BASICALLY ALL THE PROBLEMS , SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC , OF THE WHOLE NATION . T HAT KIND OF COURT CAN MAKE A VERY POSITIVE CONTRIBU- TION TO THE DEVEL- OPMENT OF THE FED- ERAL LAW AT THE NATIONAL LEVEL . —JAMES BROWNING GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3RD E DITION BROWNING, JAMES ROBERT 155 named chief of the Northwest Regional Office of the division. Before long he was called back to Washington, D.C., and named assistant chief, General LITIGATION Section, Antitrust Division. By 1951, he had joined the Civil Division as first assistant. In 1952, he was named executive assistant to the attorney general of the United States. Later that year, he organized the Execu- tive Office of U.S. Attorneys and became its first chief. Browning left the Justice Department in 1953 to enter private practice. For the next five years, he was a partner at Perlman, Lyons, and Browning, in Washington, D.C. In 1958 he was named clerk of the U.S. Supreme Court. From this position, he was appointed as a circuit judge to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, by President JOHN F. KENNEDY,on September 18, 1961. As a circuit judge, Browning became involved with the JUDICIAL CONFERENCE OF THE UNITED STATES and started exploring the field of judicial administration. (The Judicial Confer- ence is the principal machinery through which the federal courts operate and is responsible for establishing the standards and shaping the policies that govern the federal judiciary.) In the mid-1970s, there was no guarantee of speedy disposition of litigation in the federal courts. The courts of appeals, in particular, faced widespread crises because the volume of appeals far exceeded the capacity of the courts to decide them. The Ninth Circuit court was no exception, and, because of its enormous backlog of cases, was the subject of much discussion among scholars, Congress, and the judiciary. Studies to examine the problems of the Ninth Circuit usually presented one of two conclu- sions: reduce the size of the circuit, or add more judges to the court. There was strong opposition to dividing the circuit, but there was equally strong opinion that adding more judges would make the circuit even more unmanageable. Browning was named chief judge of the Ninth Circuit on July 1, 1976, and found himself in a position to experiment with his ideas on judicial administration. As the new chief judge, Browning was instrumental in convincing Congress to give the judges of the Ninth Circuit an opportunity to demonstrate that a large circuit with a large court of appeals could perform effectively. Under Browning’s leadership, that challenge was met w ith remarkable success. Foremost among the innovations initiated by Browning and his colleagues were new methods of case processing and control, including the installa- tion of the first completely computerized docketing (scheduling) system in a federal appellate court. Browning’s innovations were later chronicled in a study published by the FEDERAL JUDICIAL CENTER (Administration of Justice in a Large APPELLATE Court—The Ninth Circuit Innovations Project [1985]). The court also created an executive committee to facilitate administrative decision making, assigned simi- lar cases to the same three-judge panel, resolved panel conflicts with a “mini” EN BANC court of 11 judges (rather than with all 28 judges assigned to the circuit), and created a BANKRUPTCY panel to hear bankruptcy appeals exclusively. These modifications and more, from decen- tralized staffing to fundamental changes in the way the court deliberates, turned the Ninth Circuit into a model for other courts aro und the country. In addition to speeding upjustice, Browning’s innovations also improved the Ninth Circuit’s judicial record over time. In 1984, the Supreme Court reversed 27 of 28 decisions from the Ninth Circuit. By 1987 the circuit’s reversal rate was down to 47 percent, the third lowest in the country. James R. Browning. COURTESY OF U.S. COURTS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3RD E DITION 156 BROWNING, JAMES ROBERT On June 15, 1988, after a dozen years as chief judge, Browningsteppeddownbut remained an active circuit judge handling a full caseload. In September 2000, Browning took senior status. He retained his CHAMBERS in San Francisco and continued to hear court cases. As of 2009, Browning’s 48-year tenure on the court was the second longest of any federal judge in the United States, and the longest of any judge in the U.S. COURTS OF APPEALS . Browning helped establish the Ninth Judi- cial Circuit Historical Society in 1985, and in 1987, he became one of the founders and current board members of the Western Re- gional Justice Center, a NONPROFIT group that focuses on the improvement of the judic ial system. In 1991, he was awarded the presti- gious Edward J. Devitt Award for Distin- guished Service to Justice, and in 2001, he received the Montana State Bar Association’s William J. Jameson award. Also in 2001, U.S. Representative Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) intro- duced a bill calling for the Ninth Circuit Court’s San Francisco headquarters to be named after Judge JAMES R. BROWNING.Thebill passed, and in 2004, the courthouse was renamed in his honor. FURTHER READINGS Hursh, Jack. 1995. “Tribute to Judge James R. Browning.” Montana Law Review 56 (winter). MacLean, Pamela A. 2001. “Judge has given half a lifetime to improving courts; diplomat, leader has 40 years’ practice at shaping an expanding 9th Circuit. (James R. Browning, 9th U.S. Court of Appeals judge).” The Los Angeles Daily Journal 114 (September 27). ———. 1988 “Judge Browning’s Legacy: the Ninth Circuit’s Chief Judge Is Leaving the Court More Efficient Than He Found It.” California Lawyer 8 (June). v BROWNING, ORVILLE HICKMAN Orville Hickman Browning was born February 10, 1806, in Harrison County, Kentucky. He was educated at Augusta College and admitted to the Kentucky bar in 1831. In that same year, he relocated to Illinois and established his legal practice. In 1836 Browning served as a member of the Illinois Senate, and in 1842 participated in the Illinois General Assembly. He entered the United States Senate in 1861, replacing STEPHEN A . DOUGLAS as senator from Illinois, and remained at this post until 1862. He gained a reputation for his adversity to several policies of ABRAHAM LINCOLN, including the EMANCIPATION of slaves. From 1866 to 1869 Browning served as U.S. secretary of the interior and also acted as attorney general for a short period in 1868. He attended Orville Hickman Browning. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. ▼▼ ▼▼ 1825 Orville Hickman Browning 1806–1881 1800 1850 1875 1900 ❖ ❖ 1806 Born, Harrison County, Ky. 1881 Died, Quincy, Ill. ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ 1831 Admitted to Kentucky bar; moved to Illinois 1836 Served as member of Illinois Senate 1842 Served as member of Illinois General Assembly 1861 Elected to U.S. Senate 1861–65 U.S. Civil War 1866–69 Served as secretary of interior 1869, 1870 Attended Illinois Constitutional Convention GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3RD E DITION BROWNING, ORVILLE HICKMAN 157 . harmful effects of segregation and guaranteeing African Americans their full c onstitutional rights. GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3RD E DITION 1 52 BROWN V. BOARD OF EDUCATION OF TOPEKA, KANSAS Irons,. after the GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3RD E DITION 148 BROWN V. BOARD OF EDUCATION OF TOPEKA, KANSAS Civil War had ended and the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments had outlawed SLAVERY and. Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, the district has no obligation to remedy a later imbalance caused by population shifts. GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3RD E DITION BROWN V. BOARD OF EDUCATION