RANT & CHAT - No Politics

[ergo sum]

This legal foundation for using race as a factor in admissions and hiring can be seen in what scholars call "Southern jurisprudence." The term refers to the work of a small band of judges in the South, mostly Republicans hand-picked by President Dwight Eisenhower's attorney general, Herbert Brownell. Mr. Brownell's Wall Street demeanor masked a quiet passion for civil rights, a product of growing up in Nebraska under the influence of the progressive Republican Senator George Norris. Mr. Brownell once told me of his pride in being related to Susan B. Anthony.
The men he picked as federal judges in the South developed new constitutional doctrine in case after case during the civil rights era, and the Supreme Court signaled its general support. At that time, the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit covered six of the 11 states of the Confederacy — Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/31/opinion/31BASS.html