Two fundamental questions for any discipline are: (1) What is the subject matter of the field? and (2) What is to be asked about the subject matter? The answer to the first question as it applies to jurisprudence can be given in a word—law. This designation may appear as a gross oversimplification, but that is not the problem at all. If there were consensus in jurisprudence as to a universal and empirically applicable definition of law, the term would be suited admirably for identifying the subject matter of the field. But such consensus is lacking. Debates over conceptions of law have an ancient history, and since the end of the eighteenth century they have become more intense. Given the fact that contemporary schools of thought in jurisprudence are distinguished first and foremost by the kind of definition of law advocated, it is difficult to understand Selznick's assertion that definitions of law “are not really so various as is sometimes suggested.” To the contrary, one would be hard pressed to identify a more controversial issue in either jurisprudence or the sociology of law.

St. Louis is the only community among the eight cities here being considered which until 1954 operated a segregated system of public education. Substantial compliance with the desegregation mandated by the fourteenth amendment was effected rapidly and with a minimum of dislocation. The initial stages of desegregation took place against a background of rapid population shifts. Like many metropolitan central cities, St. Louis has suffered an absolute decline in population since World War II, a decline which was sharpest in the 1950–60 decade when a net loss of over 100,000 residents occurred. During the same period the suburban area around St. Louis experienced an increase in population in excess of 50%.

There is an age-old controversy over the relative importance and feasibility of formal and informal controls of human behavior. One body of theory, most notably the Sumner tradition, has held that control by formal laws is unimportant and dependent compared to controls by other means: “Acts of legislation come out of the mores. … Things which have been in the mores are put under police regulation and later under positive law. … The regulations must conform to the mores, so that the public will not think them too lax or too strict.”

The capital city of New York State, situated on the west bank of the Hudson River about 140 miles north of New York City, has a large range of urban, suburban, and rural land uses within its limits. Albany is obviously an old city. While it shared in the common urban experience of rapid growth during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, its population in recent decades has remained close to the 127,000 reached in 1930. The 1960 census reported that Albany contained only about 130,000 residents.

The political ideologies, identifications, affiliations, participation, contribution to campaign funds, government employment, seeking and holding office, and other aspects of the political behavior of incumbents of various occupations, professions and strata have been investigated. There are also some discussions of the political power of professions, almost exclusively concerned with the legal and medical groups. But the study of professional associations as political pressure groups and their impact on the formulation and administration of the law has been relatively neglected. Professions are prominent among the many pressure groups actively pressing claims upon and through government, attempting to have a part in shaping any public policy that affects their interest. There is ample suggestion in the literature that major portions of their efforts are directed toward the state licensure and practice laws.

San Francisco's ethnic minorities tend to be clumped in relatively small areas, with the Negro population being concentrated in three main districts. This concentration of ethnic groups leads, of course, to racial imbalance in the schools, a problem which is most serious in the elementary schools. If one considers the four main groups of the city to be Negro, Oriental (which includes the city's small Japanese and Filipino population as well as the Chinese), Spanish white, and non-Spanish white, in 1964, 36 of the 96 elementary schools contained 90% or more of one group. Of these, nine were Negro, five Oriental, nineteen Spanish white, and three non-Spanish white. In the junior high schools there is less racial imbalance, but still some: in 1964 two schools were 80% and 61% Oriental; two were 86 and 83% Negro; and two were 85 and 72% white.

The racial pattern in Chicago is illustrative of the problem facing all urban centers of the North. By 1964 nearly all of Chicago's 930,000 Negroes were grouped in racially homogeneous residential areas of the South, West, and Near North Side of the city. In the decade between 1950 and 1960 alone, the Negro population had increased by 320,000 or 52.5%. During this same period a net 399,000 white residents left the city, many resettling in suburban areas. This transformation has continued with the Negro community now constituting at least 26% of Chicago's total population.

Our purpose in this concluding analysis is to point up the various patterns which seem to emerge in these case studies. We are well aware that eight cities represent a small sample. They were selected more with reference to scholarly access than representativeness. As a result, all of the cities have universities in them. In the three cities which emerge as “most successful,” universities play a significant role—if not a dominant one—in the life of the community. Although direct participation of these universities, as such, is not emphasized in the case studies, their indirect influence may have been extremely significant in producing atypical results. Clearly we cannot hope to present any final and ultimate conclusions, but it is nevertheless possible to make a number of suggestive observations about why the school boards in some cities were able to respond to the problem of de facto school segregation more successfully and effectively than others. While there is, of course, virtually no invulnerable or uncontroversial method for measuring the relative success and failure of school boards confronted with racial imbalance in their schools, three possible yardsticks come to mind. First, do the statistics show either a decrease in the racial imbalance in some or all of a city's schools or a decrease in the trend toward increasing racial imbalance? Second, has the school system actually implemented some sort of desegregation program? Third, did the school boards (or superintendents) resolve conflict by satisfying or placating the various disputants?

The call for studies of the social impact of particular judicial, legislative, administrative and executive rules, decisions and practices is sounded sporadically and acted upon but rarely. To read the recent decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States overruling established precedents in many areas of our constitutional law is to catalogue a long list of missed opportunities for social scientists. As an example of the cause for this lament, I shall present Keyishian v. Board of Regents which for all practical purposes overruled Adler v. Board of Education.

The recent literature on school desegregation takes on added significance when viewed from the dramatic and frightening perspective of a summer of widespread rioting. Equality of Educational Opportunity (the Coleman Report), the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights document Racial Isolation in the Public Schools, and Raymond W. Mack's Desegregation and Education: Studies on the Equality of Educational Opportunities Provided for Americans of Different Races in Ten Communities set in bold relief the pivotal role education must play in mitigating the deleterious consequences of racial segregation.