Are Public Schools Becoming Constitution-Free Zones?

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. 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. Speaker’s Bio Justin Driver is the Robert R. Slaughter 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 and an Editors’ Choice of The New York Times Book Review. The Schoolhouse Gate also received the Steven S. Goldberg Award for Distinguished Scholarship in Education Law, and was a finalist for the American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel Award and Phi Beta Kappa’s Ralph Waldo Emerson Book Award. 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 New York Times Book Review, 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. In 2021, President Biden appointed Driver to serve on the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States. 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 then-Judge Merrick Garland, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor (Ret.), and Justice Stephen Breyer