Please be sure to check the conference website regularly for any updates or additional information as we get closer to the event.
Registration
Panel 1: The Backstory of Pierce v. Society of Sisters
Pierce is well known as a landmark case striking down a state statute requiring all children to attend public school, launching the Supreme Court’s due process jurisprudence protecting individual liberties. This panel will examine the unique facts of the case, put the opinion in historical context, and tee up the conference’s key themes. Moderator: Judge […]
Panel 2: Free Exercise, Establishment, and School Choice
A key consequence of Pierce was to constitutionally protect the option of private schooling. As scholars from across the ideological spectrum have pointed out, this result has produced a host of inequities, from economically privileging families with means to access private or parochial schools (leading to calls for school choice, or the ability of families […]
Panel 3: Parents’ Rights, Children’s Rights, and Social Rights
A central doctrinal legacy of Pierce is the recognition of parental rights in directing the education of their children. This legacy implicates children’s rights in the context of their education, as well as the right of society to use education for the replication of social values. The scope and meaning of these rights have changed […]
Registration and Breakfast
Panel 4: Privacy and Unenumerated Rights
Separate from parental rights, Pierce laid the foundation for substantive due process, marking the beginning of the Court’s view that due process protects individual liberties. This move set off a host of other doctrinal consequences (e.g. right to marry, have children, marital privacy, so forth). This panel will explore the legacy and current state of […]
Panel 5: The Practical Consequences of Pierce
This panel will explore Pierce’s practical consequences. How has the opinion supported or undermined home schooling, Hasidic education, especially Orthodox yeshivas, religious charter schools, and school choice in urban communities? What evidence exists about educational quality given the policies that developed because of the opinion and its consequences? And do we have a better understanding […]
Lunch
Panel 6: Was Pierce a mistake?
Concluding the discussions, this panel will focus on the question of whether Pierce was a mistake. Did the Court strike the appropriate balance between the interests of the state and families, children and parents, the secular and religious spheres, and liberty and equality? Considering both the opinion and its legacy, where has it failed and […]
