Education Reform, the Law, and the Problem with Positive Rights

Richard Epstein examines a recent case about Detroit’s struggling schools in which the Sixth Circuit ruled that students have a ‘right’ to a certain minimal standard of education. Along the way he explains the dangers of courts getting too entangled in the provision of states service, the problem with ‘positive rights’ (and why their application is different at the the state level than the federal), and what more meaningful educational reform would look like.