Wilson, Paul E., A Time to Lose, Representing Kansas in Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483, 1954

In 1952, a young Kansas Assistant Attorney General by the name of Paul Wilson was ordered by his then attorney general to submit a brief on behalf of the Topeka Board of Education and the State of Kansas in Brown v Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954).  He was then ordered to travel to Washington, D.C. to argue the case. It was Wilson’s first appellate argument.

Forty years later, Wilson, by then a Professor Emeritus at the University of Kansas Law School, penned a touching memoir of that experience.  Entitled “A Time To Lose, Representing Kansas in Brown v. Board of Education,” he dedicated the book his wife and children “who believe I was on the wrong side.” 

 This edited section of the memoir stands in stark contrast to the Mondale section in that it squarely presents to today’s readers the reality that representing the government does not always mean being on the right side of history.  Every student should ask herself if they would have accepted the assignment to argue a position in opposition to their personal beliefs. The section also reveals what while Morrison’s brief and litigation decisions were consistent with the holding in Plessey, they also put distance between Kansas and the harsh segregationist position argued the same day by Virginia, revealing that there are many ways to defend state government.