This article focuses upon Federal law in relation to school desegregation. The groundwork for many of the relatively recent legal developments in Northern school desegregation law had been laid more than a decade ago. Because the Southern cases were absorbing black organizational resources and preoccupying the federal authorities, and because questions as to which Northern practices were unconstitutional had not been judicially answered, the possibilities inherent in the early groundwork were not quickly exploited. Although many educators and lawyers find the reasons for maximizing desegregation to be compelling, as have a majority of the courts in Northern cases, it would be premature to characterize that, until the Supreme Court has spoken, as the standard always and everywhere. The courts have held to be illegal a wide variety of Northern assignment devices that have resulted in pupil and teacher segregation. And no less than in the South, the courts are requiring school districts and, where appropriate, state authorities, to adopt and implement desegregation plans that promise realistically to work now. (Author/JM)