ABSTRACT
Lower federal and state judges, who also exercise the power of judicial review, also play important roles in shaping American jurisprudence, although US Supreme Court justices typically garner far more attention. Few such judges in the twentieth century played a more important or visible role than Alabama's Frank M. Johnson Jr. Born in Alabama in 1918, Johnson graduated first in his class at the University of Alabama Law School. A Republican in a predominantly Democratic state, Johnson made friends with Herbert Brownell, who became President Dwight D. Eisenhower's attorney general. Johnson's appointment came on the heels of the US Supreme Court's historic decision in Brown v. Board of Education, 347 US 483, which declared an end to the doctrine of "separate but equal" and to the Jim Crow segregation laws by which this doctrine had been enforced.
