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In Klarman's view, Brown posed a dilemma for the justices-a conflict between law and politics, in which law came up short.

The Justices' Dilemma: Reconciling Moral Imperative with Legal Precedent Accordingly, the Court that decided Brown wasn't so much setting an entirely new standard, as recognizing one that already existed and was evolving, and enshrining that standard in the law. Klarman concludes that by the time that Thurgood Marshall stood in front of the Warren Court to argue that statutes segregating public schools should be invalidated, profound changes had already occurred in American race relations. Klarman uses these examples, together, to illustrate a steady (though not necessarily linear-there were some setbacks along the way) move away from separateness in everyday life, and toward inclusiveness.

In support of his thesis, Klarman offers interesting discussions of cases involving issues as disparate as railroad car seating and law school admission policies. Klarman, who holds professorships in both law and history at the University of Virginia, analyzes current events and high court decisions from Plessy to Brown and demonstrates how, even before Brown, many segments of society and commerce had begun to accept integration. Ferguson only because at least half of the country was moving toward the acceptance of school integration-or at least toward the belief that "separate but equal" was inevitably an oxymoron. In Klarman's view, the Brown justices agreed to overturn Plessy v. Klarman's scholarly text is unique in that it encompasses not only the decision itself, but also the events before and after. Speeches, conferences, and celebrations in the last couple of months have heralded the decision.

In light of the fiftieth anniversary of Brown, bookstores feature a plethora of books about the decision.

Klarman's From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality is at once a legal and social history of the years before and after the historic 1954 decision in Brown v. Legal historians are, of necessity, social historians. Klarman, From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Search for Equality (Oxford Univ.