Paul Finkelman (Albany Law School - Government Law Center) has posted The Centrality of Brown (CHOOSING EQUALITY: ESSAYS AND NARRATIVES ON THE DESEGREGATION EXPERIENCE, Robert L. Hayman, Jr., Leland Ware, eds., pp. 224-245, The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
This article is an examination of the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education. The Brown decision is considered by many to be one of the most important and influential decisions in the history of the United States Supreme Court. However, fifty years after Brown was decided, some scholars consider the decision to have been a failure because of its unassertive nature and failed implementation. It has been suggested that the court may have been better off enforcing the 'equal' portion of Plessy v. Ferguson’s 'separate but equal doctrine.'
