become absurd to assume, without any further proof, that violations of the Constitution, dating from the days when Lyndon Johnson was President, or earlier, continue to have an appreciable effect upon current operation of schools. We are close to that time. While we must continue to prohibit, without qualification, all racial discrimination in the operation of public schools, and to afford remedies that eliminate not only the discrimination but its identified consequences, we should consider laying aside the extraordinary, and increasingly counterfactual, presumption of Green. We must soon revert to the ordinary principles of our law, of our democratic heritage, and of our educational tradition: that plaintiffs alleging Equal Protection violations must prove intent and causation and not merely the existence of racial disparity [citations omitted]; that public schooling, even in the South, should be controlled by locally elected authorities acting in conjunction with parents [citations omitted] and that it is "desirable" to permit pupils to attend "schools nearest their homes...." 112 S.Ct. 1453,54.

On the records presented to the Supreme Court by the Oklahoma City and DeKalb County school boards, they will be able to gain the relief they sought from busing only upon the narrow basis of obtaining, to quote Justice Scalia, "a finding that no portion of the current racial imbalance is a remnant of prior de jure discrimination."

Nevertheless, the above records show growing concern by a number of members of the Court about the permanence of court-ordered busing and other supervisory control over school districts. This gives rise to the need, as Justice Scalia says, to resolve what is to be done in the vast majority of other districts where judicial oversight continues. These growing concerns offer hope that the points made in behalf of busing dissenters in these cases and in this text can ultimately gain consideration when presented in a most favorable legal context.

These two cases teach that relief from busing decrees in other districts will be opposed by busing advocates whose formidable advocacy rests upon extraordinary historical background, which merits study lest the difficulties in gaining consideration of the rights of the busing dissenters be underestimated.