Supreme Court strikes down Jim Crow Laws

I enjoy reading about the Supreme Court and I love it when they use their mighty hammers of justice to strike down an unconstitutional law. However, when scholars talk about the court, they say they don't ever go too far ahead of the populace, and always use the example of Jim Crow laws being overturned by Congress, not the Court.

That got me thinking. What would happen if the civil rights movement used the court, not the legislature, to get rid of those laws, say in the 1950s? Would this change American politics at all if Congress doesn't touch the issue? Would the debate over the court intensify?
 
It's going to be difficult, because it was a lot more difficult to get into the federal court system without a conflicting federal law or an extremely clear interstate aspect to the case in question in that era. [The presence of Section 5 makes it difficult to argue that the 14th Amendment by itself is self-executing or self-enforcing].

Also, Jim Crow wasn't entirely dependent on those laws; most of the business owners were more than willing to discriminate on their own accord, and it would be extremely difficult to get the Supreme Court to adopt the position that the absence of a law, state or federal, preventing private discrimination, in unconstitutional.
 
I saw somewhere that during Brown, US Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren, took a trip across Virginia, to think about the Case.
Coming out of his Hotel, He saw his black driver sleeping in the car, and realized how the accepted -Separate but Equal- really affected the Blacks.

However what if there had been a more extreme Happening, [Lynching or Church Burning etc]
Justice Warren come to the Invidious Distinction belief that he adopted in 1964 [Miscegenation Ruling] 10 years later.
The Brown Ruling holds - Race as a Invidious Distinction - and the US is Immediately De - Segregated in 1954.

While this would remove all Race Based Laws, This would do Nothing to affect Private Actions or Customs.
In fact it may allow Segregationists to argueagainst Civil Rite Laws, as the US is Legally De - Segregated, the State/Government has no Constitutional Right to interfere in Private Customs.
 
Also, Jim Crow wasn't entirely dependent on those laws; most of the business owners were more than willing to discriminate on their own accord, and it would be extremely difficult to get the Supreme Court to adopt the position that the absence of a law, state or federal, preventing private discrimination, in unconstitutional.

Exactly - the Supreme Court can only declare an already extant law unconstitutional. They can't declare that the absence of a law is unconstitutional (besides, if a law seems to be needed to keep the spirit of the Constitution... isn't that Congress's job?)
 
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