The Schoolhouse Gate: Students’ Rights and the Supreme CourtFeed-Your-Head SeriesIn-Person
Wednesday, May 20, 2026
5:00 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.
To be announced
What happens to the Constitution when the school bell rings?
For decades, the Supreme Court has quietly shaped what students may say, believe, wear, and challenge—often in cases that sound almost implausible until you realize they are real. In this master class, Yale Law School professor Justin Driver examines how the Court has ruled on corporal punishment, random drug testing, strip searches, and transgender students’ access to restrooms—and what these decisions reveal about power, privacy, and growing up in America.
Drawing on his acclaimed book, The Schoolhouse Gate: Public Education, the Supreme Court, and the Battle for the American Mind, Driver explores how, since the 1970s, the Court has increasingly stepped back from protecting students’ constitutional rights, raising an unsettling possibility: that public schools have become places where the Constitution applies differently—or not at all. Together, we will consider what is at stake when schools become testing grounds for the nation’s most contested ideas, and why the answers matter well beyond the classroom.
Cost: $25 (a $60 value, includes dinner and drinks)
Early Booking Exclusively for Academy Fellows*
Through April 22nd, Fellows will have early access to purchase tickets for $25 each. Space is very limited!
*You are a Fellow of The Academy for Teachers if you have been accepted to, and attended, an in-person master class.
Justin Driver
Justin Driver is the Robert R. Slaughter Professor of Law at Yale Law School, where he teaches and writes in the areas of constitutional law, constitutional theory, education law, prison law, and the law of racial inequality.
He is the author of The Schoolhouse Gate: Public Education, the Supreme Court, and the Battle for the American Mind, which was selected as a Washington Post Notable Book of the Year and an Editors’ Choice of The New York Times Book Review. Driver has an extensive publication record in leading law reviews and has written widely for general audiences, including Slate, The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The New Republic, where he was a contributing editor.
A member of the American Law Institute and the American Constitution Society’s Academic Advisory Board, Driver also serves as an editor of the Supreme Court Review. In 2021, President Biden appointed him to the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States.
Previously, Driver was the Harry N. Wyatt Professor of Law at the University of Chicago. He is a graduate of Brown University; the University of Oxford, where he was a Marshall Scholar; Duke University, where he received certification to teach public school; and Harvard Law School, where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review. After graduating from Harvard, Driver clerked for then-Judge Merrick Garland, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, and Justice Stephen Breyer.