Schoolhouse Gate

By a brilliant young Constitutional scholar at the University of Chicago--who clerked on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia for Judge Merrick B. Garland and on the Supreme Court of the United States for Justices Sandra Day O''Connor and Stephen Breyer, and who also happens to be an elegant stylist--a powerfully alarming book concerned to vindicate the Constitutional rights of public school students, so often trampled upon by the Supreme Court itself in recent decades.

Supreme Court decisions involving the constitutional rights of students in the nation''s public schools have consistently been most controversial. From racial segregation to unauthorized immigration, from economic inequality to public prayer and homeschooling: these are but a few of the many divisive issues that the Supreme Court has addressed vis-a-vis elementary and secondary education. The Schoolhouse Gate gives a fresh, lucid and provocative account of the historic legal battles waged over education. It argues that since the 1970s the Supreme Court through its decisions has transformed public schools into Constitution-free zones. Students deriving lessons about citizenship from the Courts decisions over the last four decades would conclude that the following actions taken by school officials pass constitutional muster: inflicting severe corporeal punishment on students without any procedural protections; searching students and their possessions, without probable cause, in bids to uncover violations of school rules; engaging in random drug testing of students who are not suspected of any wrongdoing; and suppressing student speech solely for the viewpoint that it espouses. Taking their cue from such decisions, lower courts have validated a wide array of constitutionally dubious actions, including: repressive student dress codes; misguided "zero tolerance" disciplinary policies; degrading student strip searches; and harsh restrictions on off-campus speech in the internet age. Justin Driver dramatically and keenly surveys this battlefield of Constitutional meaning and warns that impoverished views of constitutional protections will only further rend our social fabric.