Question

In Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court used the equal protection clause in the Fourteenth Amendment to declare educational segregation unconstitutional. Which of these would be the BEST argument FOR judicial activism in this case?

A) Many states did not follow the Supreme Court's ruling.

B) Many states did not have prior laws about educational segregation.

C) The Fourteenth Amendment was not ratified by three-fourths of the states.

D) The Fourteenth Amendment does not explicitly ban educational segregation.

Answer 1

Judicial activism is the idea that some judicial rulings are based on personal or political considerations, rather than established law. The best argument for judicial activism in the case of Brown v. Board of Education is that the Fourteenth Amendment does not explicitly ban educational segregation. Critics could argue that the justices in this case allowed their personal beliefs to influence their decision.

Answer 2

D. The Fourteenth Amendment does not explicitly ban educational segregation.

Step-by-step explanation:

In Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court used the Equal Protection Clause in the Fourteenth Amendment to declare educational segregation unconstitutional. The best argument for judicial activism would be that the Fourteenth Amendment does not explicitly ban educational segregation.

The Brown v. Board of Education all started when a young African American girl had to walk miles to her segregated school when there was a white school just a couple blocks away. Segregated things during this time were under the principle of "separate but equal," but this obviously wasn't.

This case ended up going all of the way to the Supreme Court, which ended up deeming the term "separate but equal," not equal at all. The Supreme Court used the Fourteenth Amendment and the Equal Protection Clause to expand their point, declaring that educational segregation was unconstitutional.

An argument for judicial activism would be that the Fourteenth Amendment never came out and banned segregation in an educational setting. Even so, the Brown v. Board of Education case ended segregation in schools, but it took years for all of the schools in the United States to finally become integrated.