PolicyGuy

Wednesday, June 29, 2005


The Court as the Legislature of Last Resort.
My op-ed in last week's Wichita Eagle argued that the Kansas Supreme Court was usurping legislative power by dictating how much money that state must spend on K-12 education. Today, Charlie Arlinghaus uses the Kansas situation as an introduction to a similar problem in the Manchester Union-Leader.

Arlinghaus, Concord, New Hampshire-based Josiah Bartlett Center), focuses on the k-12 funding controversy in the Granite State. But his remarks are applicable elsewhere:

Education funding exists in a limbo where the Supreme Court is regarded not as a judicial body, but as a council of elders who can be counted on to right the wrongs imposed by the people who somehow managed to get elected. If democracy isn't working out for me, maybe a lawsuit will fix it all. After all, it doesn't matter what the people we elect think, it only matters what the court thinks.

"Justice Louis D. Brandeis'?s metaphor of the states as "laboratories" for policy experiments ... had almost nothing to do with federalism and everything to do with his commitment to scientific socialism. .... To this day, it continues to inhibit a truly experimental, federalist politics." -- Michael S. Greve

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