About The Presentation
Does the Constitution guarantee a public school education? Although the Supreme Court refused to recognize education as a fundamental right in San Antonio v. Rodriguez, the Court in several other cases has emphasized the possibility that the constitution might afford some protection for education. In The Constitutional Compromise to Guarantee Education, noted scholar Derek Black offers powerful evidence that the original intent of the Fourteenth Amendment was to guarantee education as a right of state citizenship. Join Black as he presents this new theory and explores its potential consequences for the future of public education in America.
Professor Derek Black
Derek Black is a Professor of Law at the University of South Carolina School of Law. His areas of expertise include education law and policy, constitutional law, and civil rights. The focus of his current scholarship is the intersection of constitutional law and public education, particularly as it pertains to educational equality and fairness for disadvantaged students. His earlier work focused more heavily on intentional discrimination standards. His articles have been published and are forthcoming in leading journals such as the Stanford Law Review, California Law Review, Cornell Law Review, Northwestern University Law Review, and Vanderbilt Law Review. His work has also been cited in the U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeals and by several briefs before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Prior to teaching, he litigated issues relating to school desegregation, diversity, school finance equity, student discipline, and special education at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. He left the Lawyers’ Committee to teach at Howard University School of Law, where he also founded and directed the Education Rights Center.
Professor Black has also taught at the University of North Carolina School of Law and American University Washington College of Law. Beyond teaching, has been active in various outside endeavors, including serving as pro bono counsel in civil rights cases, a consultant to civil rights campaigns, and a member of the Obama-Biden Presidential Transition Team.
The Constitutional Compromise to Guarantee Education
Stanford Law Review, Forthcoming
Although the Supreme Court refused to recognize education as a fundamental right in San Antonio v. Rodriguez, the Court in several other cases has emphasized the possibility that the constitution might afford some protection for education. The Court, however, has never explained why the constitution should protect education.
New litigation is attempting to capitalize on the Court’s sympathy toward education, but convincing the courts will still require a compelling affirmative constitutional theory. This Article offers that theory, demonstrating that the original intent of the Fourteenth Amendment was to guarantee education as a right of state citizenship. This simple concept has been obscured by the unusually complex ratification of the Amendment. But this article, relying on primary sources, reveals that providing public education was a condition of southern states’ readmission to Union and was incorporated into the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. As a right of citizenship, this Article also theorizes that the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits states from partisan and other illegitimate manipulations of educational opportunity–some of which have continued to this day.
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