The Schoolhouse Gate: Public Education, the Supreme Court, and

The Schoolhouse Gate: Public Education, the Supreme Court, and the Battle for the American Mind

An award-winning constitutional law scholar at the University of Chicago (who clerked for Judge Merrick B. Garland, Justice Stephen Breyer, and Justice Sandra Day Oâ€™Connor) gives us an engaging and alarming book that aims to vindicate the rights of public school stuÂdents, which have so often been undermined by the Supreme Court in recent decades.
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Judicial decisions assessing the constitutional rights of students in the nationâ€™s public schools have consistently generated bitter controversy. From racial segregation to unÂauthorized immigration, from antiwar protests to compulÂsory flag salutes, from economic inequality to teacher-led prayerâ€”these are but a few of the cultural anxieties dividing American society that the Supreme Court has addressed in elementary and secondary schools. The Schoolhouse Gate gives a fresh, lucid, and provocative account of the historic legal battles waged over education and illuminates contemporary disputes that continue to fracture the nation.
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Justin Driver maintains that since the 1970s the Supreme Court has regularly abdicated its responsibility for protecting studentsâ€™ constitutional rights and risked transÂforming public schools into Constitution-free zones. Students deriving lessons about citizenship from the Courtâ€™s decisions in recent decades would conclude that the following actions taken by educators pass constitutional muster: inflicting severe corporal punishment on students without any proceÂdural protections, searching students and their possessions without probable cause in bids to uncover violations of school rules, random drug testing of students who are not suspected of wrongdoing, and suppressing student speech for the viewÂpoint it espouses. Taking their cue from such decisions, lower courts have upheld a wide array of dubious school actions, including degrading strip searches, repressive dress codes, draconian â€œzero toleranceâ€ disciplinary policies, and severe restrictions on off-campus speech.
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Driver surveys this legal landscape with eloquence, highlights the gripping personal narratives behind landmark clashes, and warns that the repeated failure to honor studentsâ€™ rights threatens our basic constitutional order. This magisteÂrial book will make it impossible to view American schoolsâ€”or America itselfâ€”in the same way again. Â
Country USA
Brand Pantheon
Manufacturer Pantheon
Binding Hardcover
Color White
ReleaseDate 2018-09-04
UnitCount 1
EANs 9781101871652

Country	USA
Brand	Pantheon
Manufacturer	Pantheon
Binding	Hardcover
Color	White
ReleaseDate	2018-09-04
UnitCount	1
EANs	9781101871652

The Schoolhouse Gate: Public Education, the Supreme Court, and the Battle for the American Mind