David Shapiro writes: 'With the country deeply divided on two critical institutions — education and the Supreme Court — teaching the court accurately could provide a rare source of consensus on both issues.'
American schoolchildren are growing up with a badly oversimplified lesson about their own government. They are learning that the U.S. Supreme Court is the nation’s “highest court,” a label that erroneously diminishes the power of state supreme courts. Correcting this understanding goes beyond pedagogical accuracy — it is essential for our democracy.
As California Supreme Court Justice Goodwin Liu said in a lecture, “The crucial point is that state courts, as the ultimate arbiters of state law, have the prerogative and duty to interpret their state constitutions independently” of the U.S. Supreme Court.
Teaching the truth about state court power is more important now than ever. The dismantling of Roe and many other recent decisions on topics ranging from voting rights to excessive force by police makes it very likely that the U.S. Supreme Court will scale back or eliminate long-standing rights that it ultimately controls — rights under the U.S. Constitution.
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