| The United States of America has long been a litigious society. M. Alexis de Tocqueville observed as much in his perceptive tour de force De la Democratie en Amerique/Democracy in America (1835), ascertaining a priori: "Scarcely any question arises in the United States which does not become, sooner or later, a subject of judicial debate." Today, such a climate of activism is especially evident in the matter of public education finance. Capacities of the federal government notwithstanding, the preponderance of national funding of elementary and secondary education is a combinative obligation at the state and local level. Whereas state school finance systems have engendered critical inequalities between rich and poor districts, the American zeal for fairness and equality plays out unremittingly in the courts. Since 1968, cases challenging the state school finance system have been filed in more than thirty states. At this time, twenty states across America are implicated in active stages of school finance litigation.;The purpose of this study was to focus attention on the 25-year-long New Jersey state school finance reform litigation action relative to defining the constitutional guarantee of a "thorough and efficient" system of education. This was accomplished by: (1) presenting an up-to-date, selective review and analysis of the literature on school funding adjudication, with emphasis on state court challenges; (2) examining in detail Robinson v. Cahill, the original funding reform case; (3) investigating the circuitous route of Abbott v. Burke, the landmark 1990 decision; and, (4) scrutinizing the features of The Quality Education Act of 1990. In culmination, the author drew inferences and implications from the study, and proffered suggestions for further research. |
