Education Law Commons^™

Education And Democracy From Brown To Plyler, Nicholas Espíritu

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

Judicial review has often been cast in terms of democratic legitimacy. Democratic legitimacy is often linked to whether it institutes the will of the people through majoritarian rule and whether it creates processes for reevaluation of these prior decisions by newly constituted majorities. Judicial review of majoritarian decisions has often been criticized as a overriding or circumventing of these democratic processes. Beginning with Brown v. Board of Education, the Warren Court adopted a resolution of the “counter-majoritarian difficulty” of judicial review by tacitly accepting Justice Stone’s formulation from footnote four of United States v. Carolene Products and engaging …

Opening Remarks, Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

Thank you. I am honored to be here. And there is no more fitting way to honor Michael than around the 40th anniversary of Plyler v. Doe.

This case centered on Texas statute § 21.031, which on its face, permitted the local school districts to exclude noncitizen children who entered the United States without immigration status or to charge admission for the same. The questions before the Court were: (1) whether a noncitizen under the statute who is present in the state without legal status is a “person” and therefore in the jurisdiction of the state within the meaning …