Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2024

Abstract

Professor Black attributes the ubiquitous adoption of education clauses in state constitutions in the immediate pre- and especially post-Reconstruction era to a “constitutional compromise” struck by Congress and the states. The State Citizenship commitment was designed to enhance the republican nature of both levels of governance by ensuring broader access to political participation through voting and broader access to public education to inform and support democratic deliberation. The education component of this commitment was uniquely secured, argues Black, through a state-federal compromise using two complementary mechanisms: first, by mandating states to embrace a state constitutional obligation to provide basic educational services, and second, by superimposing a relatively thin federal constitutional obligation. Professor Black completes his argument by fleshing out the federal mechanism side of the compromise, ultimately prescribing a process-based federal right to education that requires states to support their education systems with stable funding and to avoid causing or permitting any systemic group deprivations.

We believe that Professor Black’s constitutional compromise thesis invites a novel rethinking of the traditional assumption of independent state constitutionalism. We argue in this Article that the states’ side of the State Citizenship Clause compromise—which we hereafter call the states’ “compromise commitment”—should also influence how state courts interpret the right to education within their states as a matter of state law. Specifically, state courts should effectuate the Fourteenth Amendment compromise commitment by adding into their mix of interpretive methods (alongside text, state-specific history and purposes, and constitutional structure) a healthy respect for an additional fundamental purpose: to provide adequate and equitable public education as a means of securing the federal constitutional objective of supporting democratic self-governance as a birthright of citizenship.

Part I briefly describes the so-far failed efforts to secure a federal right to education and the resulting shift to state constitutional litigation that has produced mixed and limited results. Part II describes Professor Black’s proposed federal right to education secured through the State Citizenship Clause. Part III explores our new federalism model by which federal constitutional commitments should influence the proper interpretation of state constitutional provisions and then explains how our model applies to state educational guarantees. Respecting Professor Black’s compromise commitment should inspire more state courts to interpret their education clauses to guarantee at least some minimum level of adequacy and equity.

Comments

Originally published as Sunderlin, Nicole and Caminker, Evan (2024) "Channeling a Federal Commitment to Education Through State Constitutions and Courts," Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity: Vol. 13: Iss. 1, Article 4. Available at: https://digitalcommons.tourolaw.edu/jrge/vol13/iss1/4

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