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The Courts and Education
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11178 |
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MODERN THOUGHT
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3 / 1986 |
7,054 Words |
| Author
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Thomas R. Ascik
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The Supreme Court said in 1960 that "the vigilant protection of constitutional freedoms is nowhere more vital than in the community of American schools. Starting with the cases of Everson v. Board of Education (1947) and Brown v. Board of Education (1954), and continuing with one precedent--shattering case after another, the Supreme Court has applied the concept of constitutional rights to nearly every aspect of American education. Although the United States has been flooded by studies and reports severely critical of the nation's public schools. The historic changes in education wrought by the Supreme Court over the past four decades have hardly been mentioned.
Most critical are those rulings in which the Supreme Court has applied the Constitution to education without prior precedent. These have particularly affected public aid to nonpublic schools, prayer and spiritual values in public schools, racial segregation, and teacher and student rights. In these four areas, the Court on its own initiatives, has broken with the past and established comprehensive national educational policies.
Public Aid To Nonpublic Schools
The authority of any branch of the federal government to intervene in state public policies regarding religion traditionally has been governed by the doctrine of the 1833 case of Barron v. Baltimore. In this case, concerning city damage to private property. Chief Justice John Marshall, speaking for a unanimous Supreme Court, ruled that the court had no jurisdiction over the case because the Bill of Rights placed no restrictions on the actions of city or state governments. The framers of the Bill of Rights had not "intended them to be limitations on the powers of the state governments," explained Marshall.
In the 1920s and 1930s, however, the Court abandoned Barrow v. Baltimore and began developing perhaps the most important judicial doctrine of this century: the "incorporation of the Bill of Rights into the Fourteenth Amendment. That amendment ratified in 1868, made federal citizenship preeminent over state citizenship and declared in its most important parts that "no state shall …. Deprive any person of life, liberty or prosperity without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." By incorporating the various rights guaranteed by the Bill of Rights into these Fourteenth amendment guarantees, the Court gave itself power to overturn state law dealing with almost all areas covered by the ten amendments of the Bill of Rights.
The Court ruled in the 1947 case of Everson V. Board Of Education, for instance, that the First Amendment's clause prohibiting laws 'respecting an establishment of religion" was binding on the states. In this most important Supreme Court education case, except for Brown v. Board of education (1954) the Court was construing the Establishment clause for the first time. At stake was the constitutionality of a New Jersey statute requiring local school boards to provide free transportation along established routes, to children attending nonprofit, private (including religiously affiliated) schools.
More significant than the specific ruling in the case was the Court's construction of the First Amendment's Establishment Clause. Declared the
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