John E. Coons

Government alone is where law can be found. At least, the American people generally think so. That the state holds a monopoly on the making and enforcement of law is a reasonable, if vague, inference from the message of lawyers, scholars, journalists, and activists, all of whom focus on the works . . . . Continue Reading »

You cannot call up any wilder vision than a city in which men ask themselves whether they have any selves. —G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy Chesterton was wrong, for that other vision stood in the wings. But, writing in 1908, how could he have predicted that parents would one day pay minds so . . . . Continue Reading »

Civility is breaking out in a hotly contested sector of the culture war. For thirty years armies of authors have savaged one another over whether society should assure have“not families free access to all schools. The claims made for and against subsidized school choice have been extravagant, . . . . Continue Reading »

Last November, California voters defeated “Proposition 174.” Had it passed, 174 would have provided scholarships to all school children in an average amount of $2,600 (half the cost of a California public school education). The scholarships were to be usable in participating private . . . . Continue Reading »

Herbert Grover is the increasingly visible state superintendent of public instruction for Wisconsin and a man determined that no tax dollar shall be soiled by the hand of a parent on its way to school. The superintendent has fought vigorously against educational choice and is back in the papers with . . . . Continue Reading »

The media have at last grasped the fact that test scores and graduation rates improve where schools are freely chosen by families. But what many people still fail to appreciate is that the case for choice in education goes much deeper than market efficiency and the hope to overtake Japan. Shifting . . . . Continue Reading »

In 1984 a federal court held the public schools of the Kansas City, Missouri, School District to be in systematic violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. Both the district (KCD) and the State of Missouri had consciously worked to maintain racial segregation in the district's schools. The pupil . . . . Continue Reading »