text and meaning of the 14th amendment, which guaranteed equal protection. and the supreme court in the shroud versus west virginia case said what is this amendment but that the law shall be the same for the black and the white? and the supreme court unfortunately backtracked from that clear principle in the plessy decision and a horrific decision, which allowed separate by equal. brown versus board corrected that in 1954, of course. corrected it on paper. we re still seeking to achieve racial equality. the long march is not over. brown versus board as i said publicly many times before, the single greatest moment in supreme court history by in so many ways, the uminity that
everybody else does it and your answer is no. and the reason is rooted in judicial precedence. so my respect for judicial thank you. let me go on to another subject, which is executive privilege. executive privilege is a principle that is founded in the constitution and the separation of powers, correct? the supreme court so ruled in the united states versus richard nixon case. so that was the first the key issue in the united states it s all right. i need the answer to the question. you answered it. the source is important. as a privilege, it needs to be asserted. does it not? that s true of privileges generally? i don t know where this is going. straightforward question. don t privileges need to be asserted in order to apply?
privileges are recognized. when they re asserted. as a general proposition fair enough. i m asking the attorney client privilege yeah. and who asserts executive privilege? ordinarily, that is a complicated question, senator. that is who does it come back to? who asserts executive privilege. depends what you re talking about. what kind of executive branch document, it depends. in my experience ultimately it s the president. there s not as much precedent on that. there s some. the supreme court, this was the supreme court in the united states versus richard nixon isn t it fair to say that executive privilege belongs to the president of the united states, the chief executive. and it can also belong to the former president.
decisis. cases that haven t been decided for future cases. on occasion, the supreme court has decided that its decisions were just wrong and chosen to overrule those previous decisions. i m thinking of clesse versus ferguson, a scar on our body politic that said that separate but equal educational facilities met the constitutional requirement of the 14th amendment. can you talk about the extraordinary circumstance under which the supreme court would re-visit a precedent? brown versus texas board of education overturned plessy. it was wrong on the day it was decided. it was inconsistent with the
state of alabama. thanks for being here. thanks for having me. as a nonlawyer i look at u.s. v nixon and a handful of other cases and see that as a consensus case. in the legal community, in the legal world, is u.s. v nixon a controversial thing? it was a unanimous supreme court ruling. it s not controversial and by brown versus board, it s what people agree on and that s why it was shocking to see federal nominees refusing to affirm the principipals of brown. same for nixon. it s revered as a case that was correctly decided. this transcript that has just been put forth as part of the documentation around judge kavanaugh s confirmation for the supreme court, this was not him refusing to answer a question