In 1974, however, the Supreme Court decided Lau v. For most of two years, defendants opposed robustly the rights plaintiffs asserted to bilingual instruction. For reasons also to be stated, a prime practical consequence at the present time will be an award to plaintiffs of costs and attorneys' fees for their efforts in seeing to the performance of defendants' obligations.
The grounds and occasion of the declaration are detailed below. In this sufficient sense, the defendants are found to have been in contempt, and it has become the court's duty to declare it. But the idea in this context includes failures in meaningful respects to achieve substantial and diligent compliance. The word "contempt" rings fiercely if its connotations in law included only lay notions like scorn and wilful disobedience, plaintiffs could not prevail. The mandate to decide emerges now in more than routinely tense circumstances: plaintiffs have demanded that the Board of *649 Education and the Chancellor be held in contempt for their failure to comply with the duties they assumed under the consent decree and implementing orders of the court. On the other hand, the rights of the people under the law, when they are duly brought to issue before the court, must be forthrightly declared and enforced. On the one hand, seeking to superintend and rule upon intricate and technical programs like the ones in this case, an appointed judge is, or certainly should be, forcefully reminded that "ourts are not the only agency of government that must be assumed to have capacity to govern." Stone, J., dissenting in United States v. The court's assignment in such cases calls for a nice mixture of humility and resolve. Chayes, The Role of the Judge in Public Law Litigation, 89 Harv.L.Rev.
The extensive steps required for compliance have placed this court in an increasingly common, but unvaryingly delicate and difficult, role for federal trial courts the role of supervising faithful performance of tasks that are in their nature primarily administrative rather than judicial. § 2000d, federal regulations and guidelines thereunder, and the Supreme Court's enforcing pronouncements in Lau v. The decree was made pursuant to 42 U.S.C. Plaintiffs, New York City public school students of Hispanic origin (along with their parents and guardians), are entitled to a program of bilingual education under a consent decree signed on August 29, 1974. Counsel of the City of New York, New York City, for defendants Michael S. *648 Puerto Rican Legal Defense & Education Fund, Inc., New York City, for plaintiffs Herbert Teitelbaum, Richard J. ASPIRA OF NEW YORK, INC., et al., Plaintiffs,īOARD OF EDUCATION OF the CITY OF NEW YORK et al., Defendants.
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