The Journal of Appellate Practice and Process: foreword.

• Date: 22 March 2004

READING BROWN

I'm not sure that I read Brown in law school. It was excerpted, I think, in my constitutional law textbook, and I suppose that Professor Rapaczynski talked about it sometime during the spring semester ... of maybe it was Professor Schmidt in the fall. I did not, alas, attend class as often as I might have, so it's hard for me to say. I remember, however, that I was disinclined to pay much attention to Brown because I already knew what it stood for and what it told us about our history, our country, and ourselves.

That's what I thought.

And now I know that I was wrong.

Perhaps it's only the passage of time, middle age prompting me to see a world whose workings are knotted with a complexity that escaped my younger self. Of maybe it's that the law...