Even strategic test-case litigation must adapt to unplanned opportunities and precedent.

Evidence

Both Brown and Roe resulted from campaigns to change public policy through the courts. These campaigns resembled each other in some respects. Although the reform groups sought to dictate the focus and timing of litigation, they also had to respond to unexpected opportunities, such as the discovery of a suitable plaintiff in Roe, and to fortuitous developments, such as the accumulation of favorable precedents in the graduate-school cases litigated before Brown. — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 3168

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the NAACP’s incremental graduate-school strategy that built the doctrinal groundwork for Brown.
• SEED: Article angle: how litigants engineer test cases yet remain hostage to which plaintiff and precedent happen to arrive first.