Stopping the Conversation about Isolation by Race and Poverty Before It Really Began: The Case of San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez, 411 U.S. 1 (1973)

Document Type

Book Section

Publication Date

4-2022

ISBN

9781316691090

DOI

10.1017/9781316691090.039

Abstract

I have recently retired from the United States Supreme Court. It’s true that as a justice, I had life tenure, but I wanted time to reflect on the cases I had decided during my long career on the bench. And, so I am sorting through old notes, correspondence, drafts, and opinions to make sense of my jurisprudential legacy, such as it is. The process has made me feel a bit like Jorge Luis Borges in “The Other,” when as an old man, he unexpectedly meets a younger version of himself. The elder Borges realizes that the distance between him and his youthful doppelganger is not just chronological but psychological and philosophical – and, more importantly, utterly unbridgeable. JORGE LUIS BORGES, THE BOOK OF SAND 11 (1977). As I sift through my records, I have similar encounters with myself as a fledgling jurist. I was confident then that I had done everything possible to achieve just results in every case. Now, I look back and realize that I made some irretrievable mistakes, though all in good faith. They are oversights that I am able to appreciate only in hindsight, though that does not mean I feel any less regret.

First Page

675

Last Page

694

Num Pages

20

Publisher

Cambridge University Press

Editor

Bennett Capers, Devon W. Carbado, R. A. Lenhardt, & Angela Onwuachi-Willig

Book Title

Critical Race Judgments: Rewritten U.S. Court Opinions on Race and the Law

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