Hello, I’m Zhan Qingyun.

Our long discussion of jurisdiction has usually asked whether a particular court or tribunal may hear a particular case, category, or claim against a particular person.

We also asked whether courts outside a country—international or foreign—may address events inside it, such as whether an international tribunal may try a domestic genocide. These were concrete institutional questions.

At a more abstract level, we can ask whether certain matters should be governed by law at all, and whether certain people should fall within any civilized legal order’s reach.

We touched on that when philosophically asking why anyone must obey law.

Concrete cases make the question still more interesting: should this kind of dispute truly be decided by law?

Some decisions are epoch-making because they exceed their era’s customs, practices, or accepted ideas.

The most important landmark in American civil-rights history, often said to have launched the movement, was Brown v. Board of Education.

In the 1950s, before the movement had fully begun and while Southern segregation remained widespread, the Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional.

Later generations generally praise Brown as morally correct and socially progressive. It shattered the old segregated equilibrium and forced movement over the next twenty years toward greater racial equality—though full equality remains unrealized.

Yet a judgment ahead of its time also imposed great costs. America endured two decades of division, struggle, and bloodshed; President Eisenhower even sent troops to protect a few Black children entering a previously segregated white school.

Only after prolonged conflict did society begin realizing the justices’ vision.

Though later celebrated, such a decision prompts a question: courts are small, elite institutions without direct popular mandate. May they make momentous social choices and place their judgment above public opinion?

Judges are statistically likely to come from social elites. Elites also tend to be more liberal in some cultural matters. Are they the proper decision-makers?

Taiwan’s legalization of same-sex marriage offers a similar example.