The New Supreme Court

The Roberts Court completed its first full term Thursday. Highlights from the New York Times article that examines the court's rulings and conservative bent:

“This court has shown the same respect for precedent that a wrecking ball shows for a plate-glass window,” said Ralph G. Neas, president of People for the American Way...The court explicitly overturned only three precedents...Other precedents were left standing, at least for the time being, by decisions that avoided direct overrulings while providing a roadmap for future challenges....

The court’s overall approach to business cases left many in the business community gleeful. “It’s our best Supreme Court term ever,” said Robin S. Conrad, executive vice president of the National Chamber Litigation Center...

The 68 cases the court decided during the term that began last Oct. 2 and ended June 28 were the fewest since the 65 cases the court decided in 1953. That was in an era when the court received barely one-quarter of the 8,000 petitions it now gets every year. The court was deciding more than 100 cases a term as recently as the early 1990s. The justices are self-conscious about the low number and the resulting gaps in their argument schedule. But they seem unable to find a sustained flow of cases that four justices, the required number, are willing to vote to hear.

The Court also recently abrogated the Greater Louisville Area school system's method of racial integration. Students listed their primary choices for schools and were placed so that each school had a fair racial representation of Jefferson County. The results were listed in a legal brief prepared by the NAACP:

Research demonstrates that attending racially integrated schools has modest positive benefits for the academic achievement of black and Latino students, and seems to have little effect on the academic achievement of white students. Indeed, there is evidence that integrated schools improve critical thinking skills for students of all races.

Students who attend integrated K-12 schools are more likely to work in diverse environments, live in integrated neighborhoods, favor integrated schools for their own children, and have increased civic participation. Additionally, racially integrated schools promote minority students’ ability to attend selective colleges, attain higher-status jobs, and connect to professional and social networks.

Racially integrated schools not only help individual students, but benefit society as a whole. They are correlated with higher graduation rates and college attendance, which results in a more educated workforce with experience working together in interracial settings that are increasingly important in the 21st Century. Areas with extensive school integration also tend to be more residentially integrated.

The brief goes on to say that "race-neutral" integration programs, where districts use other criterion besides race (often some measure of socioeconomic status) to place students "have struggled to achieve racial diversity[, have] often resulted in significant resegregation and [have] negatively impacted the achievement of African-American students." This is the alternative that the Jefferson County school district will have to implement in order to have any integration program at all.