Professor Justin Driver Speaks at Deerfield Academy

COURTESY OF DEERFIELD COMMUNICATIONS

On April 7 and 8, Robert R. Slaughter Professor of Law and Counselor to the Dean at Yale Law School Justin Driver visited and addressed the Deerfield community about the constitutional rights of students in the United States. His talks were part of a series of speakers meant to “reinforce [Head of School John Austin’s] Framework” and “cultivate constitutional education,” said History & Social Science Department Chair and incoming Dean of Academic Affairs Brian Hamilton, who organized the event. Driver hosted a Q&A on April 7 after sit-down dinner and addressed the Deerfield student body at School Meeting the following day. 

Driver earned his Bachelor of Arts degree with honors in Public Policy from Brown University in 1997 and later earned a Master of Arts in Teaching from Duke University in 1998. He initially planned to use this degree to teach in public schools. However, he obtained a Marshal Scholarship and obtained his Master of Studies in Modern History from Magdalen College, Oxford, in 2000, and then a Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School in 2004. 

Since then, he has taught at the University of Texas School of Law, the University of Chicago, and is currently the Robert J. Slaughter Professor of Law at Yale Law School. He has also served as a law clerk to Judge Merrick Garland on the United States Court of Appeals and for Justice Sandra Day O-Conner and Justice Stephen Breyer on the Supreme Court of the United States. On April 9, 2021, Former President Joe Biden named him to the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court.

Before taking questions at the Q&A, Driver spoke about his childhood and career path. He explained how he had grown up in Southeast Washington, D.C., a predominantly black neighborhood. His father, realizing the inequality between their local public school system and that of the consistently high-performing Cleveland Park schools, slept outside one school in Cleveland so he would be first in line to register his son at one such school. Driver ended up attending Alice Deal Middle School in Tenleytown, which primarily served residents of Cleveland Park. He described the commute to school as one requiring a bus and two subway lines each day. 

Driver said that his early experiences within the public school system influenced his career path. He joked about how, when asked how long it took him to write his book, The Schoolhouse Gate: Public Education, the Supreme Court, and the Battle for the American Mind, he said that it either took him four years or four decades: “Sometimes academics find projects, sometimes projects find us.”

At his school meeting talk, Driver spoke about three constitutional issues in terms of their corresponding Supreme Court cases. First, he spoke about the 1st Amendment’s promise of freedom of speech by describing Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District (1969), commonly known as the Tinker case, and Morse v. Frederick (2007), popularly known as “Bong Hits 4 Jesus.” The Tinker case deliberated whether students wearing black armbands in protest of the Vietnam War were constitutional. The Supreme Court, in the words of Justice Abe Fortas’s opinion, eventually decided that students should not “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.” Fortas’s use of the phrase “schoolhouse gate” became the inspiration for the book’s title, Driver explained.

Secondly, Driver addressed the 4th Amendment’s protection of citizens against unreasonable searches and seizures and its application in schools. He described Board of Education v. Earls (2002), which ultimately decided that schools are allowed to enforce drug testing for students involved in extracurricular activities. Driver expressed his hope that the court would revisit this decision. 

Lastly, Driver spoke about the 8th Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment by referencing Ingraham vs. Wright (1977), where 14-year-old James Ingraham was severely paddled by his teacher, leading to medical treatment. The Supreme Court eventually declared that corporal punishment in schools was not against the 8th Amendment. Driver added that in 1976, only two states had declared corporal punishment illegal, and now in 2016, 17 states still permit corporal punishment. 

Leelah Vijapur ’29, who previously attended public school in Texas, one of the states that still permits corporal punishment, said that she “really appreciated how, even though people were at times uncomfortable…he spoke about issues like corporal punishment which are still used in public schools in Texas and are often overlooked or forgotten about.” Vijapur ’29 also added that it is unfair “for a school to have the kind of authority and power over you in a way that it makes students feel unsafe in ways that they should never have to feel at school.” 

Previous public school students, such as Anthony Ortega ’27 and Natalia Northover ’28 took the talk as a chance to reflect upon their experience with the American public school system through the lens of constitutional rights. “I didn't really realize that I had those rights until I lost them,” Ortega said. Northover commented on the inequality within the public school system, saying that it “is really extreme…[that] being in a different neighborhood [can] influence your education.” 

Both agreed that speaking about public school in a private school environment was very impactful because “at large, we are not privately educated as a society,” Ortega said. Northover commented that she believed the Deerfield population would benefit from the talk because “it’s really important to expand your horizons because these are all of the future lawmakers, world leaders, and without people who are running the future are keeping those people in mind, there will never be class balance, there will never be equality across America.” 

Mr. Hamilton echoed similar remarks, providing the example that even if “you're not in a hospital…we’d still want to talk about healthcare.” Mr. Hamilton, being publicly educated himself, believed that public schools are “one of the greatest expressions of the Democratic ideals of the United States,” and that it’s “both fitting and unfortunate that we find (American inequalities) at the heart of our public education as well.” Mr. Hamilton also highlighted that “if students didn’t show up in the way they engage, [bringing in speakers] wouldn’t be worth our time and resources in that way.”

Driver, following his speech at Deerfield, has been named a 2026 Guggenheim Fellow as of April 14, 2026. He ended his school meeting address with a call to action: “Our nation is incredibly polarized. I want us to find common ground where we can, without disregarding nuance.”