Abstract
Different from more traditional policy-making avenues, the courts provide an antipolitical arena that does not require broad agreement from various constituents for policy enactment. Seeking to guide court decisions on these policy issues, individuals and organizations have filed amicus briefs that increasingly include social science to support their arguments. The Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin Supreme Court case presents an ideal example to study the use of social science evidence in amicus briefs to shape educational policy. Findings from this study identify differences in the use of social science research that suggest many ways in which our current understanding of the efforts of actors to shape educational policy via the highest court in the nation is incomplete. This study also highlights why developing this understanding could be extremely useful to both the creation of educational policy and the use of antipolitical approaches to change such policy.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 449-476 |
| Number of pages | 28 |
| Journal | Educational Policy |
| Volume | 34 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - May 1 2020 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:We thank our graduate research assistants for their tremendous assistance with this research project and our Advisory Board for their insights and guidance. The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of the William T. Grant Foundation. The findings represent the perspectives of the authors alone.
Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2018.
Keywords
- evidence
- higher education
- legal issues