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Notes -
Anyone want to talk about test cases? Rosa Parks' name has come up again to remind us that there is a group of people who didn't know the incident was staged by the NAACP as a way to put segregation on trial. I hope that everyone knows test cases are a thing and I'm a little curious what percentage of the famous judicial cases this would apply to. I guess it tarnishes people's fuzzy feelings about the scrappy individual with pure motives facing off against evil oppression but it doesn't change the facts of the case. Personally I have the impression that the judicial system is skewed against the poor and un-savvy and rewards those who have resources behind them and know how to work the system. So it does seem to the outsider as if everyone could benefit from having an organization behind them to raise attention and mount a strong defense. Rosa Parks may have been one person but her case ended up helping the many not-so-sympathetic individuals who were also victims of the unjust system. So when you hear about a high profile case, does it matter if the person was specifically set up as a test case, and if it matters, why?
Yes. Rosa Parks is one case, but so is 'Jane Roe' in Roe vs Wade, and the striking down of the Texas sodomy laws (which, depending what account you read, needed the parties involved to set it up so that the cops would come bust them, and they got them there on another excuse).
Some laws are permitted to quietly wither away on the vine as social attitudes change, so test cases sometimes don't do much. Apart from making the name of ambitious lawyers who scent an easy victory, they don't really change anything much.
Other cases, like Rosa Parks, do provide an impetus, but in that case there was a strong social prejudice remaining which backed up the law.
And then there's the "bake the cake, bigots" cases where you have people ringing around several bakeries/pizza parlours until they find the one exception that they can then use. Where you have nine out of ten bakers happy to bake your trans gay cake, and only one hold-out, that sounds less like "brave challenge to prejudice" and more like "everyone must be Havel's Greengrocer".
So yeah, it depends (1) what the case is (2) who is bringing it and why.
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