Law of the Intangible: Desegregation, Diversity, and the Individual

This essay examines two related U.S. Supreme Court cases concerning school desegregation, Brown v. Board of Education 347 U.S. 483 (1954) and Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1, 551 U.S. ____ (2007) and argues that United States law regarding race is based not, as is explicitly claimed by the Court, on precedent but on unexpressed ideas of how an individual achieves his or her identity. By in effect shifting its conception of the individual from one that recognizes identity as formed in relation to others to an older one that figures identity as “intangible” and autonomous, the more recent Supreme Court decision has been able partially to reverse the earlier Brown decision and strike down recent voluntary school desegregation plans and throw into question current law supporting diversity.