Academic

Virelli on the Evolution Instruction & Administrative Law

By Lawrence Solum

Louis J. Virelli III (Stetson University College of Law) has posted Administrative Evolution on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

The debate over teaching evolution in public school science classes is rapidly evolving. Opponents of evolution instruction have recently introduced new policy measures that represent a significant departure from previous efforts to curtail the teaching of evolution. These new measures employ what I describe as an ?adjudicative model? for addressing evolution education. The adjudicative model shuns legislative or regulatory prescriptions in favor of higher-order policy statements encouraging educators to promote critical thinking about scientific questions, including evolution. These policy statements empower individual educators to ?adjudge? for themselves how best to engage in a critical review of evolution on a case-by-case basis. The emergence of the adjudicative model is critical to the future of evolution instruction because it requires a paradigmatic shift in the way that evolution education policy is evaluated. This Article identifies the adjudicative model and argues for a brand new way of looking at evolution instruction policy through the lens of administrative, rather than purely constitutional, law. This new perspective is important because it offers a more holistic view of the adjudicative model?s highly dynamic policy environment than that provided by a purely constitutional analysis. More specifically, treating the adjudicative model as an artifact of administrative law reveals a number of significant political and legal issues independent from, and potentially preclusive of, the traditional mode of analysis in the evolution instruction context, the Establishment Clause.

Full post as published by Legal Theory Blog on September 07, 2009 (boomark / email).