A Tale of Two Outcomes: Storytelling in Lobato v. State

Abstract

Education reform advocates, students and parents have challenged the equality and adequacy of public school finance systems for four decades. Legal scholars have examined this large body of cases from various angles. The result is a deep body of scholarship concerning school finance litigation. Similarly, there is a robust body of scholarship addressing storytelling — the use of narrative theory — in the law. The scholarly conversation about narrativity in the law began approximately 30 years ago, and originated in the feminist legal theory and critical race theory movements in legal scholarship. This scholarship then entered the mainstream of legal scholarship and stressed the importance of storytelling in litigation and legal scholarship itself. As with scholarship on school finance litigation, today there are hundreds of articles exploring the narrative theory and the law.Notwithstanding these two rich strands of legal scholarship, the two have not yet intersected. Thus, no article has analyzed school finance litigation through the lens of storytelling and narrative theory. This Article connects storytelling scholarship and school finance litigation scholarship through the analysis of one case, Lobato v. State, in which school districts, students and parents challenged the constitutionality of Colorado’s school finance system. This Article analyzes the plaintiffs’ case, the trial court decision, and the Colorado Supreme Court opinion through the lens of narrative theory. It concludes that when compelling stories are told in school finance cases, plaintiffs will prevail. Moreover, it asserts that when courts ignore the call of plaintiffs’ stories, and thus find against them, such stories can still make a difference: The stories can become part of the larger public dialogue and engender real and concrete systemic changes.