The University of New Hampshire Law Review
Abstract
[Excerpt] “In 1993, the New Hampshire Supreme Court held that “part II, article 83 [of the state constitution] imposes a duty on the State to provide a constitutionally adequate education to every educable child in the public schools in New Hampshire and to guarantee adequate funding,” and that this duty is enforceable by the judiciary. This decision, known as Claremont I, was the wellspring of a line of decisions that has radically changed both the manner in which public education is funded in New Hampshire and the respective roles of the judicial branch and the representative branches in formulating education policy.
Since the adoption of the state constitution in 1784, public education in New Hampshire had been funded primarily with local taxes. The Claremont decisions flatly rejected this long tradition of local control of the funding of public education: “Whatever the State identifies as comprising constitutional adequacy it must pay for. None of that financial obligation can be shifted to local school districts, regardless of their relative wealth or need.””
Repository Citation
Edward C.Mosca, The Original Understanding of the New Hampshire Constitution’s Education Clause, 6 Pierce L. Rev. 209 (2007), available at http://scholars.unh.edu/unh_lr/vol6/iss2/4
Included in
Education Law Commons, Education Policy Commons, State and Local Government Law Commons, Taxation-State and Local Commons