School Vouchers are Good :: Argumentative Persuasive Argument Essays

School Vouchers are GoodWise men say you cannot predict Supreme Court decisions based on questions raised during oral bloodline, but the justices go-round on the school voucher question may prove an exception to that rule - as this essay will demonstrate.Lead counsel for each side respectively provided a textbook example of how to argue, and how not to argue, before the High Court. The justices see their share of both types but rarely in the very(prenominal) case. Judith French, assistant attorney general of Ohio, defended the Cleveland program brilliantly. She was poised, calm, deliberative, and engaging. She listened to questions from the bench and fitted her responses within the doctrinal parameters of prevailing case law. Her chief opp singlent, Robert Chanin, counsel for the National Education Association, at one point or another frustrated or annoyed almost every member of the Court, including those whose support was essential to his cause. He was by turns rigid, hectoring, a nd evasive, sometimes penetrating justices off in mid-question(WCBS). On the merits, his argument was a one-trick pony Vouchers are but a backdoor transfer of government funds to religious institutions in usurpation of the Establishment Clause. Doctrinal secularism of this sort warms the blood at ACLU and teachers union rallies, but it will not bear scrutiny in serious debate. Under the Cleveland program, the suppose does not distinguish between eligible religious and secular schools and has no control over where the money ends up. Parents and parents alone -- decide which school their children will attend. Chanins argument might have secured some purchase with the Court 30 years ago, but no longer. The dominant constitutional tests of recent years speak in terms of government neutrality and non-endorsement. The Cleveland program was neutral, French said, because it gave no preference to religious schools, and endorsement was not at issue because tax dollars can depict to a reci pient institution only after the independent, intervening decision of parents. Chanins only response was to assert without demonstration that the carefully drawn criteria of the Cleveland plan were sham. solely no matter how often he said so, it was strikingly apparent that most of the justices (even those presumably sympathetic to his side) werent buying his formulaic mantra. Justice Sandra Day OConnor repeatedly tried to move Chanin beyond ritual incantation toward the specific facts at issue, but he rebuffed the invitation(Supreme Court). By refusing to concede even the slightest constitutional plausibility to the opposing argument, he essentially implied that much of the Courts First Amendment jurisprudence of the past 20 years was wrongly decided.