Challenging the Bounds of Education Litigation: \u3cem\u3eCastaneda V. Regents\u3c/em\u3e and \u3cem\u3eDaniel V. California\u3c/em\u3e

This Note argues that by combining the normative suasion of educational finance litigation with the political imperatives manifested in affirmative action law and practice, those who seek to improve the quality of secondary education and expand access to higher education would likely effect greater change than they would working independently. Under the appropriate political and legal circumstances, access to public higher education ought to be treated as something akin to a fundamental right, the unequal distribution of which constitutes a violation of equal protection for students of color and for economically disadvantaged students. Using the Castaneda and Daniel lawsuits to probe the rigid contours of school finance reform litigation and the overly formal conceptions of race-based preferences that pervade discourse about affirmative action, the author argues that these cases provide promising examples of the ways in which advocates for diversity in higher education may capitalize on the political will of the people and the structure of the state system of public education to advance an agenda that simultaneously improves secondary education while diversifying institutions of higher education. Although this Note concentrates on two cases from California, it fundamentally concerns what advocacy for educational equity will look like throughout the country for the next generation of students of color and of economically disadvantaged students. These cases, though born of the particularities of California\u27s state education system, do not embrace strategies unique to California. Rather they are harbingers of a promising nationwide trend