Complex Justice: The Case of Missouri V. Jenkins

In 1987 Judge Russell Clark mandated tax increases to help pay for improvements to the Kansas City Missouri School District in an effort to lure white students and quality teachers back to the inner-city district. Yet even after increasing employee salaries and constructing elaborate facilities at a cost of more than $2 billion the district remained overwhelmingly segregated and student achievement remained far below national averages.Just eight years later the U.S. Supreme Court began reversing these initiatives signifying a major retreat from Brown v. Board of Education. In Kansas City African American families opposed to the district courts efforts organized a takeover of the school board and requested that the court case be closed. Joshua Dunn argues that Judge Clarks ruling was not the result of tyrannical “judicial activism” but was rather the logical outcome of previous contradictory Supreme Court doctrines. High Court decisions Dunn explains necessarily limit