rights, rights, and still more rights; majorities and majorities.

[virgil tibbs]

well, there is a bit of a temporal gap between the
majorities you cite, and given the disenfranchisement
of so many Americans the majority was even bigger for
the 14th Amendment (as you would no doubt agree).  I
do get your point.

However, even with that said, the Court is an
undemocratic institution founded on an
extra-constitutional premise expounded by the Court
itself.  Nowhere in the Constitution is it indicated
which of the three branches decides the
consitutionality of the acts of government.  That
exists only in Marbury.  

As for civil rights, there is a sense in which I agree
with nathan -- the forces on the ground certainly made
change possible.  The idea of meaningful civil rights
was percolating through the country when the Court
decided Brown.  However, Brown gave civil rights the
legitimacy of law, which matters to the mushy middle. 
A cycle of justification made the Civil Rights Acts
possible.  

--- Charles Brown <CharlesB at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us>
wrote:

 
> CB: There is more than one "majority" involved here.
> Super majoriities in Congress and the state
> legislatures passed the 14th Amendment. The Jim Crow
> laws were passed by majorities in the legislatures
> of the states that had the laws ( those legislatures
> were elected with an exclusion of a major group of
> the Peoples of those states, the Black people in
> them; this raises questions about the will of the
> majorities of those states on this issue )
> 
> So, in striking down the Jim Crow laws based on the
> 14th Amendment,  the U.S. Supreme Court stood with a
> larger majority than the ones that passed the laws.
> 
> ^^^^^^^
> 
> 
> 
> The CRM took LEGAL arguments to the courts, not just
> moral ones. Among those 
> were the legal principle (of footnote 4 of US v.
> Carolene Products) 
> interpreting the equal protection clauseas
> requiriung special efforts to 
> protect discete and insular minorities. That is a
> democratic, though 
> countermajoritraian principle. That is not a
> contradiction: see Ely, 
> Democracy and Distrust. Btw the CRM also betook
> itself to the streets in a 
> democratic carnival of civil disobedience, quite
> properly too.
> 
> jks
> 

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