Cooper v. Aaron (1958)

After Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, the school board of Little Rock, Arkansas, adopted a gradual desegregation plan. In September 1957, Governor Orval Faubus used the Arkansas National Guard to block nine Black students from entering Central High School, and President Dwight Eisenhower sent federal troops of the 101st Airborne Division to escort them. Facing continued hostility, the school board asked federal courts to postpone desegregation for two and a half years, arguing that state resistance made the plan unworkable.

The Supreme Court met in a special session and on September 12, 1958, refused the delay, issuing its full opinion on September 29, 1958. In an unprecedented step, the opinion was signed individually by all nine justices. It held that the constitutional rights of the students could not be sacrificed to violence and disorder created by state officials, and that no state legislator, executive, or judicial officer can war against the Constitution without violating his oath. Citing Marbury v. Madison, the Court declared that its interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment in Brown is the supreme law of the land and binding on the states.

Cooper is the strongest statement of judicial supremacy, the view that the Court's constitutional rulings bind all other officials, not just the parties to a case. Defenders say it is essential to the rule of law and to protecting rights against defiant officials. Critics, including Attorney General Edwin Meese in a 1986 speech, have distinguished the Constitution itself from the Court's interpretations of it and argued that other branches have their own duty to interpret the Constitution. The case is invoked whenever officials resist or threaten to resist court orders.