Three other cases that were reviewed in the oral argument before the Supreme Court in December 1953 also dealt with higher education at the graduate-school level. The circumstances in _Sipuel_ v. _Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma_ (332 U. S. 630) paralleled the circumstances of the _Gaines_ case; the court entered no more than a _per curiam_ order directing that _Gaines_ be followed. On June 5, 1950, the last two cases were decided: _Sweatt_ v. _Painter_ (339 U. S. 629) and _McLaurin_ v. _Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education_ (339 U. S. 637). In both opinions, the court, speaking through Chief Justice Vinson, was careful to emphasize that it was following _Gaines_ (that is, that it was following “separate but equal”) and was not reexamining _Plessy_ at all. In the _Sweatt_ case, Texas had attempted to establish a Negro law school at Austin that would be the equal of its University of Texas Law School in Houston. Relying upon the “intangibles that make for greatness in a law school,” the court held such equality impossible of attainment. Similarly, in the _McLaurin_ case, in which Oklahoma had sought to segregate a Negro graduate in the use of library and cafeteria facilities, Vinson held for the court that “_under these circumstances_,” the Fourteenth Amendment precluded any distinction in treatment of students based upon race. Regardless of one’s views on the rightness or wrongness of segregation in the public schools, how are these precedents fairly to be characterized? Plainly, they form one unbroken chain, reaching back to the very ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment: _Garnes_ in Ohio, _Stoutmeyer_ in Nevada, _Ward_ in California, _Cory_ in Indiana, _Bertonneau_ in Louisiana, _King_ in New York, _Lehew_ in Missouri, _Plessy_ in Louisiana, _Cumming_ in Georgia, _Berea_ in Kentucky, _McCabe_ in Oklahoma, _Gong Lum_ in Mississippi, _Gaines_ in Missouri--in every one of these, extending from 1871 to 1938, the doctrine of “separate but equal” had been judicially sanctioned as not in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. And in _Sipuel_, _McLaurin_, and _Sweatt_ the doctrine had simply been ruled not applicable in the peculiar circumstances of graduate-school instruction.