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Twenty-Five Years after Rodriguez: School Finance Litigation and the Impact of the New Judicial Federalism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Douglas S. Reed
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Abstract

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This article examines the impact of state-level school finance litigation conducted in the wake of San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez. State supreme courts have handed down decisions in 36 states since the Rodriguez decision in 1973. The article looks at how these decisions have affected the distribution of educational resources in eight states—five states in which school finance activists have won and three in which they lost. The author shows that state supreme courts can have a significant impact on both the equity of school finance systems and their adequacy. This finding rebuts scholars who have recently argued that courts, acting alone, cannot achieve significant social or political change in the face of public opposition. The article also explores why some state supreme courts are more successful than others, putting forward a policy-centered model of judicial efficacy that takes into account the peculiarities of school finance as a policy issue.

Type
Research Article
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 32 , Issue 1 , 1998 , pp. 175 - 220
Copyright
Copyright © The Law and Society Association, 1998. All Rights Reserved

Footnotes

Generous support for this research had been provided by a National Academy of Education Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship. Earlier support had been provided by the Spencer Foundation, the Brookings Institution, and Yale University. I also thank the three anonymous Law & Society Review reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions.

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