Fifty years of reflection: Brown v. Board of Education and its universal implications: preface.

• Author: Treanor, Dean William Michael

Preface

The practice of segregating groups of people and forcing them into hierarchies dictated by the ruling ideology of the day is most dangerous when it proclaims that the subjugated group is different in ways that are hereditary and unchangeable. Brown v. Board of Education, the most significant United States Supreme Court decision of the twentieth century, had global antecedents and addressed issues that have tenacious roots throughout the world.

The Fordham Urban Law Journal, known for its dedication to exploring timely and provocative questions of law and policy particularly as they relate to our nation's urban centers, celebrates the fifty-year anniversary of Brown with the help of distinguished legal scholars, judges, and practitioners who played direct roles in the architecture of Brown or its implementation. They offer invaluable commentaries and insight into the role of judges in responding to the injustice of segregation.

* Forming the centerpiece of this Journal issue is an article by Maria L. Marcus, the Joseph M. McLaughlin Professor of Law at Fordham Law School. She analyses a little-known 1931 decision by the Austrian Constitutional Court which rejected Austria's first effort to separate citizens on the basis of religion and ethnicity, a rejection that was effective until the Anschluss of Germany and Austria seven years later and which presented curious parallels to Brown and its predecessors. Her ability to weave the two stories together masterfully suggests new ways to view the global implications of Brown and its aftermath.

* Judge Louis H. Pollak's "Press Prudence," Nazi Student Orders, and Jim Crow provides further insights into the genesis of the Austrian High Court's...