Cite as: 503 U. S. 467 (1992)
Opinion of the Court
regard to these plaintiffs, these arguments are not properly before us. It should be clear from what we have said that they have little substance").
Today, we make explicit the rationale that was central in Spangler. A federal court in a school desegregation case has the discretion to order an incremental or partial withdrawal of its supervision and control. This discretion derives both from the constitutional authority which justified its intervention in the first instance and its ultimate objectives in formulating the decree. The authority of the court is invoked at the outset to remedy particular constitutional violations. In construing the remedial authority of the district courts, we have been guided by the principles that "judicial powers may be exercised only on the basis of a constitutional violation," and that "the nature of the violation determines the scope of the remedy." Swann, supra, at 16. A remedy is justifiable only insofar as it advances the ultimate objective of alleviating the initial constitutional violation.
We have said that the court's end purpose must be to remedy the violation and, in addition, to restore state and local authorities to the control of a school system that is operating in compliance with the Constitution. Milliken v. Bradley, 433 U. S. 267, 280-281 (1977) ("[T]he federal courts in devising a remedy must take into account the interests of state and local authorities in managing their own affairs, consistent with the Constitution"). Partial relinquishment of judicial control, where justified by the facts of the case, can be an important and significant step in fulfilling the district court's duty to return the operations and control of schools to local authorities. In Dowell, we emphasized that federal judicial supervision of local school systems was intended as a "temporary measure." 498 U. S., at 247. Although this temporary measure has lasted decades, the ultimate objective has not changed—to return school districts to the control of local authorities. Just as a court has the obligation
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