''Cooper v. Aaron'', 358 U.S. 1 (1958), was a

landmark decision Landmark court decisions, in present-day common law legal systems, establish precedents that determine a significant new legal principle or concept, or otherwise substantially affect the interpretation of existing law. "Leading case" is commonly ...

of the

Supreme Court of the United States The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. Federal tribunals in the United States, federal court cases, and over Stat ...

, which denied the school board of

Little Rock, Arkansas ( The "Little Rock") , government_type = Council-manager , leader_title = Mayor , leader_name = Frank Scott Jr. , leader_party = D , leader_title2 = Council , leader_name2 ...

, the right to delay racial

desegregation Desegregation is the process of ending the separation of two groups, usually referring to races. Desegregation is typically measured by the index of dissimilarity, allowing researchers to determine whether desegregation efforts are having impact o ...

for 30 months. On September 12, 1958, the

Warren Court The Warren Court was the period in the history of the Supreme Court of the United States during which Earl Warren served as Chief Justice. Warren replaced the deceased Fred M. Vinson as Chief Justice in 1953, and Warren remained in office until ...

handed down a ''per curiam'' decision which held that the states are bound by the Court's decisions and must enforce them even if the states disagree with them, which asserted judicial supremacy established in '' Marbury v. Madison''. The decision in this case upheld the rulings in '' Brown v. Board of Education'' and ''Brown'' II which held that the doctrine of

separate but equal Separate but equal was a legal doctrine in United States constitutional law, according to which racial segregation did not necessarily violate the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which nominally guaranteed "equal protec ...

was

unconstitutional Constitutionality is said to be the condition of acting in accordance with an applicable constitution; "Webster On Line" the status of a law, a procedure, or an act's accordance with the laws or set forth in the applicable constitution. When l ...

Background of the case

In the wake of '' Brown v. Board of Education'' (1954), the school district of

Little Rock, Arkansas ( The "Little Rock") , government_type = Council-manager , leader_title = Mayor , leader_name = Frank Scott Jr. , leader_party = D , leader_title2 = Council , leader_name2 ...

formulated a plan to desegregate its schools. Meanwhile, other school districts in the state opposed the Supreme Court's rulings and did not make any attempts to desegregate their schools. The

Arkansas state legislature The General Assembly of Arkansas is the state legislature of the U.S. state of Arkansas. The legislature is a bicameral body composed of the upper house Arkansas Senate with 35 members, and the lower Arkansas House of Representatives with 100 ...

amended the state constitution to oppose desegregation and then passed a law relieving children from mandatory attendance at integrated schools. During this time the school board of Little Rock still continued with desegregation. However, on February 20, 1958, five months after the integration crisis involving the

Little Rock Nine The Little Rock Nine were a group of nine African American students enrolled in Little Rock Central High School in 1957. Their enrollment was followed by the Little Rock Crisis, in which the students were initially prevented from entering ...

, members of the Little Rock school board (along with the Superintendent of Schools) filed suit in the

United States District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas The United States District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas (in case citations, E.D. Ark.) is a federal court in the Eighth Circuit (except for patent claims and claims against the U.S. government under the Tucker Act, which are appeal ...

, seeking to suspend their plan for desegregation. They alleged that public hostility to desegregation along with opposition by Governor

Orval Faubus Orval Eugene Faubus ( ; January 7, 1910 – December 14, 1994) was an American politician who served as the 36th Governor of Arkansas from 1955 to 1967, as a member of the Democratic Party. In 1957, he refused to comply with a unanimous ...

and the state legislature created "chaos, bedlam and turmoil". The relief the

plaintiffs A plaintiff ( Π in legal shorthand) is the party who initiates a lawsuit (also known as an ''action'') before a court. By doing so, the plaintiff seeks a legal remedy. If this search is successful, the court will issue judgment in favor of t ...

requested was for the African-American children to be returned to segregated schools and for the implementation of the desegregation plan to be postponed until January 1961. The district court granted the school board's request, but the

United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit The United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit (in case citations, 8th Cir.) is a United States federal court with appellate jurisdiction over the following United States district courts: * Eastern District of Arkansas * Western Dist ...

reversed that decision after the

NAACP The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is a civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909 as an interracial endeavor to advance justice for African Americans by a group including W. E.&n ...

, represented by

Thurgood Marshall Thurgood Marshall (July 2, 1908 – January 24, 1993) was an American civil rights lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1967 until 1991. He was the Supreme Court's first African-A ...

, appealed. Prior to the Eighth Circuit's decision, the Supreme Court had denied the

defendants In court proceedings, a defendant is a person or object who is the party either accused of committing a crime in criminal prosecution or against whom some type of civil relief is being sought in a civil case. Terminology varies from one jurisdi ...

' request to decide the case without waiting for the appeals court to deliberate on the case. Once the appeals court handed down their decision in favor of the defendants, the school board appealed to the Supreme Court, which met in a rare special session to hear arguments.

The court's decision

In a joint opinion authored by all nine Justices (the only instance of that occurring on record), but primarily drafted by Justice Brennan, the Court noted that the school board had acted in good faith, asserting that most of the problems stemmed from the official opposition of the

Arkansas Arkansas ( ) is a landlocked state in the South Central United States. It is bordered by Missouri to the north, Tennessee and Mississippi to the east, Louisiana to the south, and Texas and Oklahoma to the west. Its name is from the O ...

state government to

racial integration Racial integration, or simply integration, includes desegregation (the process of ending systematic racial segregation). In addition to desegregation, integration includes goals such as leveling barriers to association, creating equal opportuni ...

. Nonetheless, it was constitutionally impermissible under the

Equal Protection Clause The Equal Protection Clause is part of the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The clause, which took effect in 1868, provides "''nor shall any State ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal ...

to maintain law and order by depriving the black students of their equal rights under the law. More importantly, the Court held that since the

Supremacy Clause The Supremacy Clause of the Constitution of the United States ( Article VI, Clause 2) establishes that the Constitution, federal laws made pursuant to it, and treaties made under its authority, constitute the "supreme Law of the Land", and thu ...

of Article VI made the

US Constitution The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States of America. It superseded the Articles of Confederation, the nation's first constitution, in 1789. Originally comprising seven articles, it delineates the nation ...

the supreme law of the land and '' Marbury v. Madison'' (1803) made the Supreme Court the final interpreter of the Constitution,The Court claimed that Marbury

... declared the basic principle that the federal judiciary is supreme in the exposition of the law of the Constitution, and that principle has ever since been respected by the Court and the country as a permanent and indispensable feature of our constitutional system. 358 U.S. 1, 18

Chief Justice

John Marshall John Marshall (September 24, 1755July 6, 1835) was an American politician and lawyer who served as the fourth Chief Justice of the United States from 1801 until his death in 1835. He remains the longest-serving chief justice and fourth-longes ...

wrote in Marbury,

it is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is. Those who apply the rule to particular cases must of necessity expound and interpret that rule. U.S. (1 Cranch) at 177

For a different understanding of ''Marbury'' see Pryor, William
"The Unbearable Rightness of Marbury v. Madison: Its Real Lessons and Irrepressible Myths"
, ''Engage'', Volume 12, Issue 2, p. 94 (2011). the precedent set forth in ''Brown v. Board of Education'' is the supreme law of the land and is therefore binding on all the states, regardless of any state laws contradicting it. The Court therefore rejected the contention that the Arkansas legislature and Governor were not bound by the ''Brown'' decision. The Supreme Court also rejected the doctrines of nullification and

interposition Interposition is a claimed right of a U.S. state to oppose actions of the federal government that the state deems unconstitutional. Under the theory of interposition, a state assumes the right to "interpose" itself between the federal government a ...

in this case, which had been invoked by segregationists. Segregation supporters argued that the states have the power to nullify federal laws or court rulings that they believe to be unconstitutional and the states could use this power to nullify the ''Brown'' decision. The Arkansas laws that attempted to prevent desegregation were Arkansas' effort to nullify the ''Brown'' decision. The Supreme Court held that the ''Brown'' decision "can neither be nullified openly and directly by state legislators or state executive or judicial officers nor nullified indirectly by them through evasive schemes for segregation." Thus, ''Cooper v. Aaron'' held that state attempts to nullify federal law are ineffective. Moreover, since public officials are required to swear an oath to uphold the Constitution (as per Article VI, Clause 3), the officials who ignored the supremacy of the Court's precedent in the ''Brown'' case violated their oaths. ''Cooper'' also maintained that even though education is the responsibility of the state government, that responsibility must be carried out in a manner consistent with the requirements of the Constitution, particularly the Fourteenth Amendment.

Critical response

Despite all nine Justices signing the opinion,

Justice Frankfurter Felix Frankfurter (November 15, 1882 – February 22, 1965) was an Austrian-American jurist who served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1939 until 1962, during which period he was a noted advocate of judicia ...

published a separate, concurring, opinion. He was, however, dissuaded from announcing it the same day as the main opinion by Justices Brennan and

Black Black is a color which results from the absence or complete absorption of visible light. It is an achromatic color, without hue, like white and grey. It is often used symbolically or figuratively to represent darkness. Black and white ha ...

, who felt a unanimous decision would emphasize how strongly the Court felt about the issue. Frankfurter's opinion did not directly contradict the majority opinion, but it did reemphasize the importance of judicial supremacy and expressed disdain for the Arkansas State Legislature's actions. Some legal scholars criticized the Court's rationale in ''Cooper''. Perhaps the most famous criticism of the case was that of former

US Attorney General The United States attorney general (AG) is the head of the United States Department of Justice, and is the chief law enforcement officer of the federal government of the United States. The attorney general serves as the principal advisor to the p ...

Edwin Meese, in a law review article entitled ''The Law of the Constitution''.Meese, Edwin
"The Law of the Constitution"
''

Tulane Law Review The ''Tulane Law Review'', a publication of the Tulane University Law School, was founded in 1916, and is currently published five times annually. The Law Review has an international circulation and is one of few American law reviews carried by ...

'', Vol. 61, p. 979 (1986-1987). There, Meese accused the Court of taking too much power for itself by setting itself up as the sole institution responsible for the interpretation of the Constitution. He wrote that while judicial interpretation of the Constitution binds the parties of the case, it should not establish a supreme law of the land that must be accepted by all persons.

Notes

Sources

*Farber, Daniel A.; Eskridge, William N., Jr.; Frickey, Philip P. ''Constitutional Law: Themes for the Constitution's Third Century''. Thomson-West Publishing, 2003. *Hall, Kermit L. ed. ''The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States, Second Edition''.

Oxford University Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...

Press, 2005. *Freyer, Tony A. Little Rock on Trial: Cooper v. Aaron and School Desegregation. Lawrence (KS), 2007.

External links