It's All About Stategery

Slate has an interesting article today about the importance of litigation strategy in big civil rights cases. It contrasts the legal cases for gay marriage that developed in Massachusetts and California, concluding that the California experiment was doomed from the start because it wasn't properly strategized. As an historical reference, it points out that the powers behind the suit in Brown v. Board of Education waited for years to bring that case, until the political and social conditions were more receptive to it. They also carefully chose the plaintiff - she attended an all-black school that was, by all accounts, better than the all-white school in the area. That bit of planning essentially precluded the Court from propping up the separate but equal paradigm.