Future of Desegregation after Dowell: Returning to Pre-Brown Days, The

Court-ordered desegregation is one of the major social controversies of our time. School systems that have long been subject to the remedies of desegregation want to be relieved of judicial intervention and want control returned to the local school board. This desire, however, sometimes conflicts with the mandate in Brown v. Board of Education that in the field of public education the doctrine of \u27separate but equal\u27 has no place. In Dowell, the Supreme Court concluded that local control can be returned to a school board, with the resultant elimination of busing, so long as the district has taken all steps practicable to eliminate vestiges of past discrimination. This Note will examine these requirements for the return of local control to the school board and how they could conflict with the mandate of Brown v. Board of Education. It will also address whether, under Dowell, a finding of unitariness will automatically dissolve an injunctive decree