CBA Record September-October 2026

PRO BONO WEEK 2026 – A MORE PERFECT JUSTICE SYSTEM

The Court then decided these intangibles apply to grade school and high school education because of the damage done to students by legal ized segregation based on race: “To separate them from others solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely to be ever undone.” The Court quoted from a decision issued by the court in a Kansas case, which had ruled against the Black plaintiffs, but had also stated, “The [detrimental] impact is greater when it has the sanction of law: for the policy of separating the races is usually interpreted as denoting the inferiority of the negro group.” The ensuing Civil Rights Movement after Brown to enforce equal ity, and the passage of the Civil Rights Acts to obtain equality in other public areas, such as voting, further expanded the application of “equal.” Other groups that believed they were not equally protected by the laws, like other minorities and women, have benefited from the struggle of enslaved Africans and their descendants to seek equal treat ment under the law. The Meaning of Equality The Court in Dred Scott stated that enslaved Africans were not a part of the whole human family and therefore were excluded from the Constitution. The process for curing the effects of slavery was stated in the 14th Amendment: equal protection of the law. Thereafter, Afri can Americans had an opportunity to flourish, and many did during Reconstruction until it was brutally ended. Legalized segregation, based on the continued perspective of racial hierarchy, was held consti tutional by the Supreme Court in Plessy . The Brown case restored the hope of the cure process of equal protection under the law when the Court found that, in edu cation, legalized segregation was inherently unequal. That decision opened the door to the possibility of a more faithful appli cation of “equal” in the Equal Protection Clause. That decision benefited African Americans and other groups that had been denied that promise. While we have come far as a nation, I feel that much of the prog ress during my lifetime has recently been treated as settling the racial hierarchy perspective that thwarted realizing Constitutional promises. In my view, that perspective is not settled. The meaning of equality remains in flux, shaped by the perspectives of those who sit in judg ment, all the way to the United States Supreme Court. Nevertheless, I believe that it is still possible to fulfill the aspiration in the statement the framers made in the Declaration of Independence to justify the colonists fighting a war to obtain freedom from British oppression: “that all men [and women] are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

William R. Ming, Jr.: Dedicated to the Promise of Equal Justice By Judge Sophia H. Hall (ret.)

William Robert Ming, Jr. (1911-1973), was among the lawyers represent ing the appellants in Brown v. Board of Education , serving as a trusted advisor to Thurgood Marshall. Writing about Brown , I could not but feel, again, how privileged I was to have been men

tored by him. I clerked for him at McCoy, Ming and Black during law school, and after I passed the bar exam in 1967, they kept me on. That firm, formerly McCoy, Ming and Leighton, was one of the country’s leading African American law firms of the time. In 1960, Ming defended Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., against perjury charges in Alabama and won an acquittal before an all-white jury. Ming graduated cum laude from the University of Chi cago School of Law in 1933 and became the first Black elected to the Order of the Coif. He taught at both Howard University School of Law and the University of Chicago School of Law, where he was the first full-time Black faculty member at a predominantly white law school. A brilliant thinker and writer, Ming also played key roles in several Supreme Court civil rights cases, including Shelley v. Kraemer (1948) and NAACP v. Ala bama (1958). Through him, I joined the group of lawyers working with the NAACP to press the promise of the 14th Amend ment’s Equal Protection Clause. Ming was a driving force in the courtroom struggle for Black equality. My most treasured memory of Ming is when he asked me if I wanted to argue a case I had tried. Not any oral argument, mind you, but before the United States Supreme Court. This showing of his confidence in me made “yes” my only possible response. On the bench sat Justice Thurgood Marshall. I also witnessed first-hand the price Ming paid for his relentless pursuit for equal rights. After filing some tax returns late, a misdemeanor, a federal judge imposed consecutive sentences that ensured prison time. During that prosecution, that judge did everything he could to humiliate Ming, but Ming never gave up his dignity. From Bob Ming, I learned what it means to practice law in service to the rule of law. All of us have personal frailties and have at times seen the failings of our justice system. But those years under his tutelage have remained within me: Dedication to justice is not an easy path, but every step we take can inspire others to work to realize that our nation’s promise of “equal justice under law for all” is a shared and living truth.

Judge Sophia H. Hall (Ret.) served with distinction on the Circuit Court of Cook County, where she held leadership roles as the Presiding Judge of the Juvenile Division and as well as the Juvenile Justice and Child Protection and Chancery Divisions.

24 September/October 2026