Judicial intervention as policy: Impacts on population distribution and redistribution in urban areas in the United States
Clark, W.A.V.
Population Research and Policy Review 1(1): 79-100
1982
ISSN/ISBN: 0167-5923 Document Number: 393899
Two interrelated issues have increasingly occupied the attention of the courts, as judges, lawyers and expert witnesses wrestle with the issue of school desegregation and mandatory busing. The first of these issues concerns the extent to which there are causal relationships between schools and housing patterns, while the second issue revolves around the impact of mandatory busing on white flight (either as population relocation or public school abandonment). The courts have chosen to accept the tenuous argument of a causative relationship between schools and housing and to downplay the considerable impacts of their court orders requiring mandatory busing. These court orders have directly influenced population distributions and may affect population redistribution in the future.