“Justin Driver’s extraordinary book, The Schoolhouse Gate, deeply probes the many ways in which our constitutional law, as interpreted by America’s judges, shapes the crucial world of public education—but fails the students for whom that education exists. No one who cares about our nation’s children and thus our country’s future can afford not to read this riveting work.”
—Laurence Tribe, Harvard Law School, author of Uncertain Justice: The Roberts Court and the Constitution
“Justin Driver has written the definitive account of the intersection of two of the nation’s most important institutions—public schools and the Constitution. Race, sex, drugs, religion, free speech, and indoctrination—it’s all here. Driver brings the cases to life with compelling portraits of the characters behind the disputes, while simultaneously providing incisive analysis of the role of the Constitution in the classroom.”
—David Cole, Georgetown Law, ACLU National Legal Director, author of Engines of Liberty: How Citizen Movements Succeed
“It's pretty unusual to be moved to tears by a closely argued book on constitutional law. But Driver's The Schoolhouse Gate is a most unusual book. Written with elegance and passion, Driver's account of the role of the U. S. Supreme Court in defining the rights of students in our public schools is also an uncompromising work of meticulous scholarship, which will define our understanding of its topic for years to come. But there's something more: there's an indefinable quality of hope and love in this book, for our flawed yet aspiring processes of constitutional adjudication, as well as for the millions of children whose futures they shape.”
—Martha C. Nussbaum, University of Chicago, author of The Fragility of Goodness
“The Schoolhouse Gate is a gripping, comprehensive, and accessible analysis of the role of the Supreme Court in the regulation of student life in public primary and secondary schooling. It bristles with insight and eloquence and substantiates Driver’s burgeoning reputation as a leading figure in legal academia.”
—Randall Kennedy, Harvard Law School, author of Race, Crime, and the Law
“What a wonderful, engaging, provocative book! Justin Driver contends that federal courts have an essential role to play in expanding the constitutional rights of public school students. Even readers who disagree with some of the book’s conclusions—like myself—and believe that school decisions should instead be left largely to school boards, superintendents, principals, teachers, and parents will be forced to grapple with the powerful historical and legal arguments advanced in this impressive volume.”
—Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, author of From Brown to Bakke
"In this sweeping, meticulous, and authoritative account, Justin Driver shows how the Supreme Court has long shaped the lives of students in American public schools, for better but also patently for worse—affirming their freedom of speech yet thwarting it, for example, and ending their separation by race in theory yet making that almost impossible to fulfill in many places throughout the USA. He shows how momentous rulings about education helped make the Court one of the nation’s most powerful institutions, yet politically driven and frustratingly fickle. The Schoolhouse Gate is an important, engrossing, and excellent book, by an important, gifted, and brave thinker and writer."
—Lincoln Caplan, Yale Law School, author of The Tenth Justice
![]({"https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51w5xSe2WfL._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg":[233,346],"https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51w5xSe2WfL._SX334_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg":[336,499]})
