State Court Funding Symposium

I want to announce to our readers an upcoming event at the Universiy of Kentucky College of Law that has implications for education law.  The event, jointly sponsored by the Kentucky Law Journal, the American Bar Association, and the Center for State Courts, is a symposium on the funding of state courts, many of which are currently in what can best be described as a resource crisis.  Here is a link to the schedule of events on September 23-24, which include Keynote addresses by both Dean Erwin Chemerinsky of the UC-Irvine School of Law and current ABA President (and UK Law grad) Bill Robinson. 

Now, what does this have to do with education law?  Well, two major things.  First, as with almost all categories of law, the majority of education related disputes are resolved in state judicial systems.  A funding crisis in those systems will inevitably lead to a crisis in educational dispute resolution.  Second, as many of you know, to the extent that "education rights" exist in our system, these rights are primarily state constitutional rights.  Where state judicial systems are hampered, the development of these rights is also hampered.  The issue of state court funding is therefore a vital one for those interested in education policy and law. 

I encourage anyone with an interest in these issues of access to justice (and the ability to be in beautiful Lexington, KY this Friday and Saturday) to attend the symposium. 

The South Dakota School Finance Decision

My blogging haitus is nearly at an end.  For now, I offer a couple of quick thoughts about the recent South Dakota Supreme Court decision rejecting an adequacy-based challenge to the state's school financing system.

First, the state defendant won this one on the merits, based on the evidence (particularly, the lack of evidence of causation--more on that below).  This, I think, is the first adequacy case of which this can be said.  The recent state victories in Indiana and Missouri were not truly of the same character, both being based on a general approach to judicial deference bordering on the political question doctrine.  The recent Oregon decision, also a state merits victory, was based on a quirky textual feature of the Oregon Constitution that does not exist in any other.  The South Dakota decision, while deferential to legislative policy choices (especially in stating the standard for proving unconstitutionality as "beyond a reasonable doubt"), is based on a much deeper review of the evidence. 

Second, and relatedly, the opinion is very well-reasoned and fair in its explanation (I, of course, take no position as to whether the court is representing the state of the record evidence properly, as I was not involved in the trial and have no access to the record on appeal).  It takes the arguments of both the state and the plaintiffs very seriously, and is does not appear to place any kind of thumb on the evidentiary scale for either party.  This approach is not necessarily new, but this is one of very few school finance decisions on the merits where a state supreme court has gone out of its way to show the readers of its opinion that both sides indeed presented good arguments.  I think that goes a long way toward fostering the opinion's perceived legitimacy. 

Finally, and most importantly, the South Dakota decision is also the first that has required the plaintiffs to establish a causal link between the many educational deficiencies that they were able to establish in the evidence and the action or inaction of the state government.  As perennial state-side litigator Al Lindseth has pointed out both in scholarship and in court, in adequacy cases in which plaintiffs prevail, there is little to no discussion of causation.  This South Dakota decision hinges almost completely on the insufficiency of evidence of causation.  This feature could make the South Dakota decision a very impactful one. 

I look forward to seeing how this opinion works its way into the scholarship. 

Edjurist now has a cousin in HigherEducationLaw.org

I've been away from posting a while, but I've been working on a little project and wanted to announce that Edjurist now has a younger relative.  Fortunate enough to have assembled what I think is a pretty neat bunch of folks, we have just launched HigherEducationLaw.  The site, as the really creative name implies, will focus on legal issues in higher education. We're just getting started, but I think that we'll soon be putting out some really good content.

I've really enjoyed being a contributor on Edjurist and plan to stay on as long as I can keep stealing the password from Justin. My hope is that the two sites can reference each other often and share content of interest to both audiences.  For those of you interested in higher education legal issues, I hope that, along with the Edjurist, you'll add HigherEducationLaw to the blogs that you follow.

And now that I've got the site up and going, I also plan to be able to pick up the pace with posting on here.