States can legally nullify Supreme Court rulings through obstructionist legislation and delay.

Evidence

Not all Southern resistance was overtly illegal. Opponents of Brown appealed to public opinion, seeking to inflame hostility toward the Supreme Court and desegregation. The most influential of these appeals was the congressional “Southern Manifesto,” signed by more than 100 Southern senators and representatives, which denounced Brown as an abuse of judicial authority and pledged to overturn it “by all lawful means.” School boards masked their intransigence in inaction, offering ingenious justifications for delay instead of desegregation plans. State legislatures enacted laws designed to fortify segregation and discourage desegregation. … From 1954 to 1957 alone, Southern states enacted more than 130 new laws and constitutional amendments designed to preserve segregation. Commentators wryly noted that Southern school desegregation exhibited far more deliberation than speed. — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 2991

Categorization

• XREF: Illustrates the textbook’s core theme that judicial decisions depend on implementation by other political actors — connects to debates over judicial supremacy versus departmental review.
• SEED: Angle: ‘The Southern Manifesto as precedent’ — how coordinated interbranch resistance to a constitutional ruling became a template for later defiance campaigns.
• CANDY: ‘More deliberation than speed’ is a genuinely quotable line about Southern desegregation that lands without much setup.