COLEMAN’S REASONING FLAWED IN RACE-BASED PROGRAMS CASE
The splendid article by Tony Mauro of Legal Times concerning United States Supreme Court oral argument in the Seattle and Louisville public school student assignment cases ["Justices hinting at end of race-based school programs?", Dec. 12] emphasized the reaction of William Coleman Jr., whom the article describes as a “senior counselor at O’Melveny & Myers” and an associate of the late Justice Thurgood Marshall at the time of the 1954 Supreme Court argument in Brown v. Board of Education. Mr. Coleman, probably in a burst of hyperbole, declares he was “disturbed � in a case involving the rights of black people to get an education, nobody was representing black people.” He then opines that, in Mauro’s words, “the prospect for saving the race-conscious programs might have been better ‘if Thurgood Marshall had been there, or Jack Greenberg, or myself.’” Besides debasing the school districts’ lawyers, Mr. Coleman implies that only a black person can effectively advocate positions of affected persons who are black, which might seem analogous to holding that only lawyers convicted of crimes can represent clients accused of crimes.
As an aside, Mauro describes Justice Stephen Breyer as “the son of a school board attorney.” Mauro, who writes from Washington, D.C., could have added that Justice Breyer’s father, the late Irving Breyer, Esq., guided the San Francisco Unified School District Board of Education in its 1970 decision to bus young elementary school pupils (including mine) for racial balance. Of course, in 1970, San Francisco public schools contained enough white pupils to do that.
Quentin L. Kopp
Redwood City
Editor’s note: Quentin L. Kopp is a retired judge of the San Mateo County Superior Court.
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