AALS Scholarly Paper Award winner examines how sit-ins challenged role of courts

The Association of American Law Schools recently announced that Christopher W. Schmidt has won its Scholarly Paper Award for his article examining how the views of parties to the conflicts of the

Civil Rights Movement differed as to the judiciary's role in reforming (or not) the law. Titled Divided by Law: The Sit-Ins and the Role of the Courts in the Civil Rights Movement, Schmidt's paper evaluates how the interaction of various perspectives affected movement organization and related outcomes.

Here's the abstract:

The lunch counter sit-in movement of 1960 was a contest not only over nondiscriminatory access to public accommodations, but also over the role of the courts in the developing civil rights movement. The students who launched the sit-ins explicitly defined their protest as an alternative to litigation-based reform tactics. Leading civil rights lawyers, in contrast, urged the students to rely on the judicial process. White business owners and local officials also divided over whether criminal prosecution of the protesters would best serve their interests. These divergent attitudes toward the courts derived from differences of strategy and ideology. They were also affected by developments in Fourteenth Amendment doctrine: by 1960, whether the non-discrimination principle of Brown v. Board of Education reached (or would soon reach) privately owned public accommodations was an open question. Conflict over the appropriate role of the courts ultimately worked to the students’ advantage. It contributed to their collective identity as a protest movement, helped secure outside support, and divided their opponents. Attention to the expectations diverse people placed upon the courts offers a vehicle for charting the ways law and perceptions of law shaped the sit-in movement at various levels—in the streets as well as the courts, among laypeople as well as lawyers and judges. This approach suggests new insights into the intersection of formal legal change and social movement mobilization.

Congratulations Professor Schmidt!

CRL&P related posts:

• Today in Civil Rights History: Martin Luther King, Jr. wins Nobel Peace Prize
• Today in Civil Rights History: Decision in Civil Rights Cases announced
• Upcoming article draws attention to largely overlooked Supreme Court civil rights decision
• Race or Party? How Courts Should Think About Republican Efforts to Make it Harder to Vote in North Carolina and Elsewhere