1970 Term Summary and Analysis

Burger was very concerned with appearances and was looking for a landmark case that would distinguish him and his Court. "As his second term approached, Burger worried increasingly about how his tenure would measure up against Earl Warren's. In Warren's first term, the Court had handed down the Brown school desegregation ruling. Over the next sixteen years, his monumental reputation for leadership and integrity had rested in large part on the continuing chain of school desegregation cases" (1970 Term, p. 95). Busing was becoming a very heated issue throughout the nation.

In Charlotte, North Carolina, the US District Judge James B. McMillan ordered desegregation in Mecklenberg County to be based on the racial composition of the population, seventy-one percent white and twenty-nine percent black. Burger felt that this was a form of racial mixing that went beyond the intent of the Brown case...