Amid the current national debate over immigration policies, racial discrimination, LGBTQ rights, and executive power, the anniversary of an important legal and political dispute that has directly shaped that debate will pass quietly, its legacy all but forgotten. In September 1958, sixty years ago next week, the United States Supreme Court finally earned its hard-fought reputation as a co-equal branch of the federal government, in a courtroom drama filled with urgency and uncertainty. For perhaps the first time, the high court put muscle behind its mandate, asserting in unequivocal terms that its interpretation of the Constitution was the "supreme law...
