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Universidad De Manila

COLLEGE OF LAW
(Formerly known as the City College of Manila)
A.J. Villegas St. Mehan Gardens, Ermita, Manila
CONSTITUTIONAL LAW II
NAME: DENNIS T. VELASQUEZ PROFESSOR: ATTY. EDWIN BELLEN
YEAR AND SECTION: JD 101

BROWN VS. BOARD OF EDUCATION


(Reaction Paper)

The Board of Education in Topeka, Kansas operated separate elementary schools for white and
African-American students, based on the doctrine, “separate but equal”, which was laid down in
the prior case Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 where equality of treatment is accorded when races
are provided substantially equal facilities, even though these facilities be separate.

The case at hand involves Linda Brown, the daughter of the named plaintiff, who could have
attended a white school several blocks from her house but instead was required to walk some
distance to a bus stop and then take the bus for a mile to an African-American school.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) challenged the
policy, as it has done in the other cases in South Carolina, Virginia, Delaware and Washington,
with which the U.S. Supreme Court had combined to hear with the instant case for having parallel
issues.

The NAACP was unsuccessful at the trial court level, where the 1896 Supreme Court precedent in
Plessy v. Ferguson was found to be decisive. Even though the trial court agreed that educational
segregation had a negative effect on African-American children, it applied the standard of Plessy
in finding that the white and African-American schools offered sufficiently equal quality of
teachers, curricula, facilities, and transportation. Since the NAACP did not challenge the details
of those findings, it essentially cast the appeal as a direct challenge to the system imposed by
Plessy.

A reversal of the “separate but equal” doctrine from Plessy v. Ferguson was handed down in the
case at hand based on the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United
States Constitution, which granted citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the United
States—including former slaves.

As the opinion writer Chief Justice Earl Warren said: “Today, education is perhaps the most
important function of state and local governments. Compulsory school attendance laws and the
great expenditures for education both demonstrate our recognition of the importance of education
to our democratic society. It is required in the performance of our most basic public
responsibilities, even service in the armed forces. It is the very foundation of good citizenship.
Today it is a principal instrument in awakening the child to cultural values, in preparing him for
later professional training, and in helping him to adjust normally to his environment. In these days,
it is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the
opportunity of an education. Such an opportunity, where the state has undertaken to provide it, is
a right which must be made available to all on equal terms.
We come then to the question presented: Does segregation of children in public schools solely on
the basis of race, even though the physical facilities and other "tangible" factors may be equal,
deprive the children of the minority group of equal educational opportunities? We believe that it
does.”

IN REACTION TO THE RULING, it is perhaps one of the most important landmark cases handed
down by the U.S. Supreme Court. The Fourteenth Amendment to their Constitution decreeing
Equal Protection would be for naught if it could not be without application.

Although the Court, through the decision, was given power to end the inequality even wanting in
legislation, later decisions perhaps did not ultimately force compliance with the Brown issue. Just
as another justice in the case at hand believed, there are enforcement problems identified which
proved difficult to settle and prove.

Where most of our laws and our Constitution were patterned primarily with those of the United
States, it is not without application. We have our own share of similar cases involving the equal
protection clause. A classic example is that of Villavicencio vs. Lukban, where women, despite
their being in a sense, lepers of society, were taken away from their domicile of choice, are not
chattels, but Filipino citizens, protected by the same constitutional guarantees as are other citizens.

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