Source: http://www.childrenslegalrightsjournal.com/childrenslegalrightsjournal/volume_34_issue_1?pg=100
Timestamp: 2019-04-25 10:05:26+00:00

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federalism. 78 As the Court took on a more conservative bent under Chief Justice Burger, Brennan argued that plaintiffs should turn to state courts for expanding protection of individual rights and liberties. 79 Following Robinson, several state supreme courts answered Justice Brennan’s call and invalidated inequitable school funding systems under their state’s education clause. 80 Yet when plaintiffs from some of Illinois’ most impoverished schools brought similar arguments before the Illinois Supreme Court, the court firmly rebuked Justice Brennan’s call.
Court’s rulings in Edgar and Lewis E., and discusses their impact on education funding litigation.
78 William J. Brennan, Jr., State Constitutions and the Protection of Individual Rights, 90 HARV. L. REV. 489, 491 (1977) (arguing that plaintiffs should seek out expanded civil rights under state constitutions, and describing this push as a “new judicial federalism”); see also Blanchard, supra note 33, at 237 (tying Justice Brennan’s call for a new judicial federalism to the shift in education funding cases to state courts).
79 See Brennan, supra note 78. Justice Brennan criticizes several of the Supreme Court’s civil liberties opinions issued under Chief Justice William Burger, including those affecting free speech; the rights of women, criminal defendants, and the poor; and tenured public employees. See id. at 495-96 (arguing that the Supreme Court in the 1970s had begun to “pull back” from its more progressive civil liberties jurisprudence in the previous decade). State courts and constitutions, Justice Brennan urged, are “font[s] of individual liberties” and should reach beyond the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence in protecting individual rights. Id. Criminal law often provided examples of state supreme court independence in constitutional matters. See Blanchard, supra note 33, at 238-39 (citing as examples of state supreme court independence Commonwealth v. Upton, 476 N.E.2d 548 (Mass. 1985), in which the Massachusetts Supreme Court rejected the U.S. Supreme Court’s Fourth Amendment analysis in Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213 (1983), and State v. Morris, 680 A.2d 90 (Vt. 1996), in which the Vermont Supreme Court expanded the expectation of privacy beyond the limits established by the U.S. Supreme Court in California v. Greenwood, 486 U.S. 35 (1988)).
80 See ADEQUACY LIABILITY DECISIONS, supra note 77 (noting that twenty-two of thirty-four state adequacy cases, which are generally argued based on state constitution education clauses, have resulted in plaintiff victories); see, e.g., Robinson v. Cahill, 303 A.2d 273, 295 (N.J. 1973) (resting its decision on a violation of the state’s education clause).
81 See 105 ILL. COMP. STAT. ANN. 5/18-8.05 (West 2013) (setting the Illinois general state aid system for the 2013-2014 school year). 82 ILL. CONST. art. X, § 1.
83 105 ILL. COMP. STAT. ANN. 5/18-1 to 18-20; see ILL. STATE BD. OF EDUC., GENERAL STATE AID (2011), http://www.isbe.net/funding/pdf/gsa_overview.pdf [hereinafter GENERAL STATE AID] (providing an explanation of the education finance statute).
84 105 ILL. COMP. STAT. ANN. 5/18-8.05; see GENERAL STATE AID, supra note 83. For the 2012-2013 school year, the foundation level of funding per pupil was $6, 119. Id.; 2012 ANNUAL REPORT, supra note 4, at 2. Due to reductions in General State Aid in the Illinois State Fiscal Year 2013 budget, however, the effective amount of funding per pupil during this time was actually $5,734. See id.
85 See GENERAL STATE AID, supra note 83 (providing additional explanation of the school funding statute).

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