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NJ Press Media article sheds light on 'thorough and efficient' clause over more than 137 years
Courier Post On-Line - Long-running school funding case before court again, 4-20-11

"The group of 10 lawyers, two bankers, two businessmen, a farmer and a newspaper editor debated for two years about how New Jersey should pay for and educate its schoolchildren...Ultimately, the 1873 Constitutional Commission settled on "A thorough and efficient system of free public schools" as the phrase to codify the state's responsibility toward education in the New Jersey Constitution..."

Courier Post On-Line  -  Long-running school funding case before court again

By JASON METHOD • New Jersey Press Media • April 20, 2011

TRENTON — The group of 10 lawyers, two bankers, two businessmen, a farmer and a newspaper editor debated for two years about how New Jersey should pay for and educate its schoolchildren.

Ultimately, the 1873 Constitutional Commission settled on "A thorough and efficient system of free public schools" as the phrase to codify the state's responsibility toward education in the New Jersey Constitution.

Back then, that phrase meant something far different than it does now, say experts. Nonetheless, the state Supreme Court today will again listen to arguments in the long-running school funding case as lawyers argue how the constitution should be interpreted.

The court is expected to decide in coming months whether to direct New Jersey to spend more money on its local schools in order to help even the educational playing field for children from low-income families or who face other disadvantages.

The case will be among the most watched in years, as Gov. Chris Christie has battled the court over this issue and repeatedly derided it for clinging to "a failed legal theory" that has failed to achieve better results.

Underneath the debate, says state constitutional scholar Robert F. Williams, is the long-running question that is often asked about the U.S. Constitution -- to what degree should justices reinterpret canons from an earlier age and apply them in the modern era?

Williams said that for the last 30 years, the state Supreme Court has been very clear: It will interpret the constitutional phrase as the justices feel it needs to be interpreted today.

"The court has said: This is a living constitutional clause that evolves over time. What was thorough and efficient for an education in 1875 then won't cut the mustard now, and the court has been explicit about that," Williams said.

The court has selected the "thorough and efficient" clause -- much debated by advocates and critics of the court's school funding decisions -- as "a great ordinance, meaning a living evolving character," Williams said.

Williams said he could not envision the court reconsidering the issue. Still, Peter Mazzei, who wrote a 2006 law journal article on the origins of the phrase, said records show the constitutional framers had an entirely different interpretation.

"We need to look at the historical record to understand the full meaning," said Mazzei, a librarian for the nonpartisan Office of Legislative Services. "Thorough and efficient applied to the process of education occurring in the classroom."

For example, with much of the state then using one-room schoolhouses, often run on subsistence funding, constitutional commission members such as lawyer John W. Taylor, a former teacher, wanted to make sure that students learned in successive grades, Mazzei said.