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\"Some state decisions,\" Brennan wrote, \"have indeed suggested a connection between these recent decisions of the United States Supreme Court and the state court's reliance on the state's bill of rights.\" Examining questions of jurisdiction, Brennan noted that the U.S. Supreme Court is largely limited to ruling on issues that were decided on the basis of federal law or the U.S. Constitution but not cases decided solely on the basis of state law. Brennan wrote, \"Some state courts seem apparently even to be anticipating contrary rulings by the United States Supreme Court and are therefore resting decisions solely on state law grounds.\"

[...]New York Times v. Sullivan has become one of the foundational pillars of freedom of speech in the United States. \"15 Brennan's decision in Sullivan to define unprotected \"libelous\" speech about public officials as encompassing only calculated falsehoods injurious to their reputations, a decision endorsed by five other members of an otherwise unanimous Court, was actually a more speech-restrictive formulation than the approach favored by the three remaining justices, who, relying on a literal reading of the constitutional text (an approach that Thomas typically favors), would have declared all defamation actions brought by public figures to be precluded by the First Amendment.16 Thomas issued his opinion while agreeing with the Court's decision to deny a petition for certiorari in a libel case against Bill Cosby, the comedian imprisoned for sexual assault. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit affirmed a trial judge's decision that McKee was a limited-purpose public figure and was unable to carry her burden of proving actual malice.17 Although the issue was not placed before the Court by McKee's petition, and although he wrote that he agreed with the Court's decision not to hear her case, Thomas used the Court's denial of certioriari as a vehicle to announce his view that the Supreme Court should reconsider Sullivan, overrule it, eliminate the actual malice standard, and return full control over libel law to the states. The state courts found the ad to be libel per se because it contained a number of relatively minor errors, concluded that the ad was about Sullivan because some of his witnesses testified at trial that they understood its criticisms to be a reflection on him, and therefore presumed damage to his reputation, all in accordance with the common law of Alabama.22 The only option for The Times was to prove the truth of the misstatements contained in the ad, which it could not do, both because there were errors and because the newspaper was not responsible for the content.23 As Lewis documents, Sullivan's suit, the others filed against The Times, and still others filed against other national media outlets then attempting to cover the civil rights movement in Alabama were not motivated by a desire to recover damages for actual reputational harm so much as to dissuade the press from reporting to the nation about a subject of palpable public concern.24 Simply put, the damage awards sought (and in many cases awarded) in multiple lawsuits aimed to make it too expensive for newspapers and television networks to continue reporting about civil rights.

[...]the radical insistence in 1939 by Maury Maverick, a populistic Congressman from San Antonio, Texas, that the Constitution written in 1787 \"is not the sole constitution of our American liberties. [...]we should recall the words that Thomas Jefferson wrote to James Madison from Paris in 1789, that \"no society can make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetua, law.\" According to the chairman of Mississippi's current commission to draft a new state constitution, the state is determined to draw \"a new constitutional blueprint that will allow us to face the future instead of hanging on to the past. [...]if the Constitution is really based upon popular sovereignty-as the framers claimed in theory, and subsequent implementation over time has augmented in actuality-then it can only be described as a living Constitution.

Driscoll explains how and why Justice William J. Brennan has come to be considered not just the preeminent justice of the Warren Court, but also the \"embodiment\" of the liberal vision of the Constitution as an engine of social and political change.\"

Perhaps his strongest expression of that commitment came in his dissent in San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez4 The Court majority found that the use of the property tax to fund public education did not violate the Constitution, even though the system resulted in unequal resources for rich and poor districts.5 In dissent, Marshall wrote that the \"majority's holding can only be seen as a retreat from our historic commitment to equality of educational opportunity and as unsupportable acquiescence in a system which deprives children in their earliest years of the chance to reach their full potential as citizens. \"6 Critical of leaving any property tax solution to the legislature, Marshall quoted one of the most powerful lines from Brown v. Board of Education.7 He wrote, \"I, for one, am unsatisfied with the hope of an ultimate 'political' solution sometime in the indefinite future while, in the meantime, countless children unjustifiably receive inferior educations 'that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone. See Green v. County School Board, 391 U.S. 430, 442 (1968) (holding that a freedom of school choice plan was insufficient to meet the school district's obligation to desegregate); see also Keyes v. School District No. 1, 413 U.S. 189, 213 (1973) (finding intentional segregation in the Denver school system).

Perhaps his strongest expression of that commitment came in his dissent in San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez,4 The Court majority found that the use of the property tax to fund public education did not violate the Constitution, even though the system resulted in unequal resources for rich and poor districts.5 In dissent, Marshall wrote that the \"majority's holding can only be seen as a retreat from our historic commitment to equality of educational opportunity and as unsupportable acquiescence in a system which deprives children in their earliest years of the chance to reach their full potential as citizens. \"6 Critical of leaving any property tax solution to the legislature, Marshall quoted one of the most powerful lines from Brown v. Board of Education.7 He wrote, \"I, for one, am unsatisfied with the hope of an ultimate 'political' solution sometime in the indefinite future while, in the meantime, countless children unjustifiably receive inferior educations 'that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone. See Green v. County School Board, 391 U.S. 430, 442 (1968) (holding that a freedom of school choice plan was insufficient to meet the school district's obligation to desegregate); see also Keyes v. School District No. 1, 413 U.S. 189, 213 (1973) (finding intentional segregation in the Denver school system).