which Justice Powell characterized in 1972 as the "single most disruptive element in education today." As Justice Scalia urged in 1992 in a DeKalb County, Georgia, case, the high court must resolve soon what is to be done in those school districts under judicial oversight where "democratic processes remain suspended, with no prospect of restoration, 38 years after Brown v. Board of Education..."

The author's background lends itself to presentation of his constitutional arguments in the Carlin case and in this book. He retired in 1973 after serving as a United States Magistrate in the Southern Judicial District of California. He had been an Assistant United States Attorney in Charge in San Diego, covering San Diego and Imperial Counties. Thereafter, he acted as United States Commissioner in San Diego, and then became Director-Chief Counsel for the Legal Aid Society of San Diego from 1966 to 1969.

Upon retirement, he set up a home office in Julian, handling selected cases in pro bono publico. At age 67, he was selected to direct the San Diego Volunteer Lawyer Program during its first year of operation in 1983, while continuing pro bono representations previously undertaken.

Enstrom first began to appreciate the role of lawyers in society when he became a courtroom clerk in Los Angeles in the late 1940s and began the independent study of law, culminating in his becoming a lawyer 11 years later in 1957. He "broke in" with the distinguished Senior United States District Judge Paul J. McCormick, who rendered the first desegregation decision, which was in favor of the Mexican-American plaintiffs in Mendez v. Westminister School District, 64 F.Supp. 544 (SD Cal.1946), aff'd 161 F.2d 774 (9th Cir. 1947).

Following retirement from federal service, Enstrom received nightly Los Angeles newscasts, often headlining the controversy arising from a 1970 Superior Court busing order. The resolution of this dispute was of particular interest to him because of his early familiarity with this type of case. Then, later, as a legal services attorney, he had secured the transportation of Indian children on the Rincon Indian Reservation to their nearest public schools after discontinuance of local school transportation had caused many of them to go to distant Indian schools or discontinue their schooling. Mazzetti v. Escondido Union High School District (San Diego Superior Court, 1968).

The busing controversy in Los Angeles intensified when the state Supreme Court approved busing in its Crawford decision in 1976 as a