"Rose at 20": Foreword


I just posted to SSRN my latest draft of the Foreword to the "Rose at 20" Special Feature issue forthcoming in the Kentucky Law Journal. The issue, which includes three featured papers by distinguished school finance scholars Bill Thro, R. Craig Wood, and Bill Koski, will be out in Spring 2010 as Issue 4 of Volume 98 of the Journal. Here is the abstract of the Foreword:
In this Foreword to the University of Kentucky’s “Rose at 20” Symposium, I seek to introduce the three featured articles, as well as to identify two major paradigm shifts in school finance litigation that grew out of the Kentucky Supreme Court’s decision in Rose v. Council for Better Education.
Although the Rose decision is primarily noted for the success of adequacy theory as a strategy for proving constitutional harm, less noticed doctrinal innovations in Rose lay in the court’s treatment of education rights and the remedies warranted for their violation. As to rights, the Kentucky court was the first to enforce the right to education as a positive or affirmative individual right. As to remediation, the Kentucky court ushered in the still-dominant judicial view of separation of powers as an independent limit on judicial review at the remedial stage of litigation. These two doctrinal changes distinguished Rose from the litigation that preceded it, and they remain relevant today.
You can download the latest full-text version here.