Was Brown v. Board of Education Correctly Decided?

Ronald Turner

For decades now, judicial nominees, including those for seats on the Supreme Court of the United States, have been asked and have answered questions about the correctness of Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court’s landmark 1954 decision, and its “unshakable precedent” holding that state laws prohibiting black schoolchildren from attending public school with white students violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

In recent judicial nominee confirmation hearings before the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut, has posed the Brown question to President Donald J. Trump’s nominees for lower federal court judgeships. Unlike judicial nominees in previous administrations, a number of President Trump’s nominees for lifetime appointment to the federal bench have refused to answer the Brown query.