The school desegregation cases of the 1970s brought the Supreme Court face to face with difficult problems of urban racial change. In dramatic contrast with the early southern cases, where one only needed to read the state code to find proof of unconstitutional action and where one could often repair the damage with a relatively simple and self-evident remedy, the Supreme Court now had to deal with complex social issues: How did the cities become segregated? How much difference did the segregationist acts of the local school boards make? What kind of remedy was technically feasible? What kind of a plan would work? Would the plan itself become a major force in the demographic change of the urban community? To what extent are the forces of segregation and ghettoization confined to individual areas and municipalities within a metropolitan area, and to what extent is any highly localized remedy a denial of social reality?