Public education is “the most important function of state and local government” and yet not a “fundamental right or liberty.” This Article engages one of constitutional law’s most intractable problems by introducing “the public right to education” as a doctrinal pathway to a constitutional right to education process in three steps. First, it identifies that the otherwise right-to-education foreclosing case, San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez, only contemplated education as a fundamental right or liberty interest. Second, by identifying public education as a due process–protected property interest, this Article presents a viable pathway for circumventing Rodriguez. Third, mindful of myriad judicial competency concerns and consistent with the Court’s recent call to reimagine a “twenty-first-century” due process, it reintroduces the “public right” to understand how school-children might appeal to substantive due process to protect their rights to state-created interests. This ambitious yet modest approach covers securing schoolchildren’s rights to both discrete education tangibles and the integral educational opportunity that the states have assumed the affirmative duty to provide. This approach also has promise for improving individual rights to quality public schooling.

公共教育是“州和地方政府最重要的职能”，但不是“基本权利或自由”。本文通过三个步骤将“公共受教育权”作为通向宪法受教育权过程的理论途径引入，从而解决了宪法中最棘手的问题之一。首先，它确定了原本取消教育权的案件，即圣安东尼奥独立学区诉罗德里格斯案，仅将教育视为一项基本权利或自由利益。其次，通过将公共教育确定为受正当程序保护的财产利益，本文提出了规避罗德里格斯的可行途径。第三，铭记无数司法能力问题，并符合法院最近呼吁重新构想“二十一世纪”正当程序的呼吁，它重新引入了“公共权利”，以了解学童如何诉诸实质性正当程序来保护他们对国家创造的利益的权利。这种雄心勃勃但适度的方法涵盖了确保学童对离散的有形教育和各州承担的肯定义务提供的整体教育机会的权利。这种方法还有望改善个人获得优质公立学校教育的权利。