Race, sex, religion, crime, liberty, patriotism, equality. The Supreme Court’s treatment of these incendiary topics has indelibly shaped public education and the constitutional rights of students around the country. In his new book, Professor Justin Driver of Yale Law School maintains that since the 1970s, the Supreme Court has regularly abdicated responsibility in protecting students’ rights, risking transforming public schools into Constitution-free zones and in turn jeopardizing our basic constitutional order. How have courts evaluated corporal punishment, random drug tests, strip searches, and transgender students accessing restrooms? Join Justin Driver, author of “The Schoolhouse Gate: Public Education, the Supreme Court, and the Battle for the American Mind,” as he analyzes these pressing legal questions regarding public schools and their place in American society.
Justin Driver is Professor of Law at Yale Law School. He teaches and writes in the area of constitutional law and is the author of The Schoolhouse Gate: Public Education, the Supreme Court, and the Battle for the American Mind. The book was selected as a Washington Post Notable Book of the Year, an Editors’ Choice of the New York Times Book Review, and received an honorable mention, Silver Gavel Award, American Bar Association, 2019.
A recipient of the American Society for Legal History’s William Nelson Cromwell Article Prize, Driver has a distinguished publication record in the nation’s leading law reviews. He has also written extensively for general audiences, including pieces in Slate, The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The New Republic, where he was a contributing editor. A member of the American Law Institute and of the American Constitution Society’s Academic Advisory Board, Driver is also an editor of the Supreme Court Review.
Previously, Driver was the Harry N. Wyatt Professor of Law at the University of Chicago. Driver is a graduate of Brown, Oxford (where he was a Marshall Scholar), Duke (where he received certification to teach public school), and Harvard Law School (where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review). After graduating from Harvard, Driver clerked for Judge Merrick B. Garland, Justice Stephen Breyer, and Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.
This event is cosponsored by the Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity and Transnational Migration, the Black Law Students Association, the Asian Pacific American Law Students Association, and the Latino Law Students Association.