Complex Justice: The Case of Missouri V. Jenkins - Hardcover

Dunn, Joshua M.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0807831395 ISBN 13: 9780807831397

Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press, 2008

Synopsis

In 1987 Judge Russell Clark mandated tax increases to help pay for improvements to the Kansas City, Missouri, School District in an effort to lure white students and quality teachers back to the inner-city district. Yet even after increasing employee salaries and constructing elaborate facilities at a cost of more than $2 billion, the district remained overwhelmingly segregated and student achievement remained far below national averages.Just eight years later the U.S. Supreme Court began reversing these initiatives, signifying a major retreat from Brown v. Board of Education. In Kansas City, African American families opposed to the district court's efforts organized a takeover of the school board and requested that the court case be closed. Joshua Dunn argues that Judge Clark's ruling was not the result of tyrannical "judicial activism" but was rather the logical outcome of previous contradictory Supreme Court doctrines. High Court decisions, Dunn explains, necessarily limit

About this title

Book Description

"A premier case study of race and education in the 1980s and 1990s."-- Journal of Southern History

From the Inside Flap

In the federal court's most expensive attempt at school desegregation, in 1987 Judge Russell Clark mandated tax increases to help pay for improvements to the Kansas City, Missouri, School District in an effort to lure white students and quality teachers back to the inner-city district. Joshua Dunn argues that Judge Clark's ruling was not the result of tyrannical "judicial activism" but was rather the logical outcome of previous contradictory Supreme Court doctrines. High Court decisions, Dunn explains, necessarily limit the policy choices available to lower court judges, introducing complications the Supreme Court would not anticipate. He demonstrates that the Kansas City case is a model lesson for the types of problems that develop for lower courts in any area in which the Supreme Court attempts to create significant change.

Edition details

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0807831395
• ISBN 13: 9780807831397
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 240