ROBERT LEVY IS COMPLAINING about Congressional efforts to overturn D.C.’s gun ban, arguing that they will undercut the Parker case before it gets to the U.S. Supreme Court.

That would be bad — at least as compared to an alternate future where the U.S. Supreme Court took the case and ruled correctly, in favor of an individual right to arms. On the other hand, how likely is that? It’s not impossible, but it is, to put it charitably, far from assured. On the other hand, there’s reason to believe that repealing the D.C. gun ban is the best move, and that it will create momentum toward gun control rollbacks elsewhere.

Who’s right? Who knows? Which is why it’s unfortunate to see gun-rights people imputing bad faith to those who disagree. This sort of uncertainty is typical in litigation of this sort — one reason why I like to show my students in Constitutional Law the excellent film about Brown v. Board of Education, Separate But Equal, is that it does a good job of displaying how people of good will in the civil rights community disagreed on whether it was best to go full-bore to end segregation, as Thurgood Marshall ultimately did, or to proceed incrementally. And as the film makes clear at the end, the answer to that question still isn’t certain.

UPDATE: Levy emails:

Glenn, in my DC Examiner article, to which you link in your posting today, I am indeed complaining about the NRA’s confusing postion on the Parker litigation. But nowhere in the article did I impugn the NRA’s motives. I raise a number of questions, advance a number of arguments, and contend that the NRA’s endorsement of the DC Personal Protection Act undermines Parker and is a disservice to the gun rights movement. Those are the facts as I see them. But I have not suggested that the NRA is acting in “bad faith” or is motivated by anything other than a desire to promote the same ends that Parker seeks.

He’s right, and I didn’t mean to suggest that he was doing so, though the passage above could easily be read that way. That’s my error, and I should have had a better transition from what Levy was saying to what other gun-rights advocates are saying — and, believe me, a lot of them are (wrongly, I think) suggesting that the NRA has bad motives here.

A MARTIN LUTHER KING DAY ESSAY, from Jeff Goldstein.

Meanwhile, it occurs to me that King has been turned into a wooden saint — a la George Washington — rather than the complex, flawed, and heroic human being that he actually was. It also seems to me that today’s students — this is certainly true of my law students, both black and white — no longer really grasp the reality of the pre-Civil Rights era. That’s a good thing overall, of course. But in teaching about this stuff, I’ve favored excerpts from the excellent, though lengthy Eyes on the Prize documentary, and I’ve also used the excellent (and rather accurate for such things) Brown v. Board of Education docudrama, Separate But Equal, in which Sidney Poitier plays Thurgood Marshall. (Charles Black is played by an actor who, as Black said to me once, bears an unfortunately close resemblance, something that can’t be said for Poitier and Marshall. . . . I think that Black was a bit jealous of that.) It’s a docudrama, so they take some liberties, but they’re comparatively minor — the plot is based on Richard Kluger’s Simple Justice — and the legal discussion is actually rather good. But more importantly the film makes clear that Brown was far from preordained, that there was a lot of disagreement in the black community and the civil rights community about how to proceed.

I think it’s good that the pre-Civil Rights era has receded in our collective memory, but I also think it’s important that we retain some sense of just how different things were then.

UPDATE: Video of King’s “I Have a Dream” speech.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More on King here.

IN THE MAIL: Mark Elliott’s Color-Blind Justice: Albion Tourgee and the Quest for Racial Equality from the Civil War to Plessy v. Ferguson, which looks quite interesting. Tourgee was the lawyer for the losing (anti-segregation) side in Plessy v. Ferguson, the case that gave birth to the doctrine of “separate but equal.” He had been a champion of racial equality during Reconstruction, but the U.S. public tired of keeping troops in the South and the national press painted Reconstruction as an unrealistic failure, leading to the takeover of pro-segregation forces and the enactment of Jim Crow laws. Tourgee continued to fight these — with some support from Civil War veterans — but it was mostly unsuccessful, setting the stage for long-term problems that affect America to this day.

It should go well with this book by Jennifer Weber.

TODAY IS THE FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF BROWN V. BOARD OF EDUCATION, a momentous event and one that shows the value of an extended commitment to justice.

I highly recommend the Brown film Separate But Equal, starring Sidney Poitier as Thurgood Marshall, to anyone interested. I showed this in my Constitutional Law class this year. I don’t generally like to show films in class — they eat up a lot of class time, and most of them don’t teach much law. This one, however, does a good job of capturing both the social conditions (now largely alien to my students) and the legal strategizing (often forgotten even by lawyers) involved in the case.

When the movie came out, I talked to my former professor and mentor, Charles Black, about it. He said it was quite accurate for a movie, though he was a bit disturbed by the casting: “They got Sidney Poitier to play Thurgood,” he said, “while they picked some fella who’s a dead ringer to play me.”

I DON’T USUALLY SHOW FILMS IN CLASS, but in light of the Trent Lott affair, I decided this year to show the film Separate But Equal, about the Brown decision, in my Constitutional Law class. (Here’s a link to the Amazon page with reviews.) I’ve only shown the first installment, but it seems to have worked well — as a film should, it has far more impact in a room full of people than when watched solo.

Unlike most legal docudramas, it pays a lot of attention to actual lawyering, and to the strategic and tactical decisions that lawyers have to make. If you haven’t ever seen it, you may want to check it out. It’s rather long, but it’s worth your time.