Law on The Great Plains: An Introduction

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka is one of the most important cases in American jurisprudence. Almost everyone recognizes the name of the case and its importance for ending legal segregation in the United States, but almost no one pays any attention to its setting, Kansas and the Great Plains. Does this case represent part of a distinctive legal culture of the Great Plains? Until recently, we have had no way to answer this question because no one has ever attempted a systematic study of law on the Great Plains. This issue of the Great Plains Quarterly is the very first such study. The fifteenth annual symposium of the Center for Great Plains Studies, held in March 1991 and devoted to Law, the Bill of Rights, and the Great Plains, was the first conference of scholars solely devoted to discussing plains law. In this issue are four essays originally presented at that symposium