The idea that lawsuits can move a public agenda is not new. Most often cited in this regard is the several-decades-long legal campaign that began in the 1940’s to put an end to Jim Crow racial discrimination. Nullifying the laws that propped up southern segregation was an essential element of that legal effort, but it was only one element. An equally important objective was to build a case for ending the attitudes and cultural practices that those laws reinforced. The ongoing public drama of a series of high profile cases was a vehicle for a broad cultural shift, of which the legal disputes were only one part.
Because of the central role of litigation in the success of the civil rights movement, high profile litigation has been used to effect broad social change of other kinds, too. In the decades
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