And Justice For All

In The Governance Imperative: Response 1: Rethinking "fair but not right" Craig writes,

Despite the opinion of the Supreme Court of the Plessy era, the presence of the 14th and 15th amendments removed promotion of racial discrimination from the arena of legislative competence. The Constitution was amended to reflect a new standard of fairness, which was not applied by the Supreme Court until the Brown decision 100 years later.

My point would be that to have resolved the issue sooner would have to involve a political process. If you want to blame someone or some group, that is understandable. Several questions come to mind about how Plessy and Brown played out in the courts. Are the Honorable justices solely at fault for a court that, when it came to civil rights for blacks, re-enacted the story of the blind men and the elephant? Why wasn't the President on the hook for nominating justices who would turn a blind eye to the inequities of Plessey? Why did it take Brown to wake up Congress to the need for action? Why did it take until 1964 for Congress decide to embed the new definition of what we considered right, or civil rights, into the legal tapestry of the country? Might we say in this case that at the very least, the Supreme Court was the first of the three branches to finally wake up - after 200 years - from the nightmare of slavery, see the light, and declare that "and justice for all" really means "and justice for ALL"?