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Kyle C. Velte*
Abstract:
This article tells the story of one case, Lobato v. State, in which dozens of school districts, schoolchildren, and their parents challenged the constitutionality of Colorado’s state-wide public-school-funding system—and analyzes the impact of the stories told in that case to both the trial court and the Colorado Supreme Court through the lens of narrative theory.
The article’s goals are two-fold. First, it applies three story types—a “Story of the Parties,” a “Story of the Process,” and a “Story of the Law”—to analyze how judges are influenced by story. It concludes that trial courts can be influenced through the use of a powerful justice narrative told through a Story of the Parties frame. Analysis of judges’ acceptance or rejection of stories through a school-finance case study adds to scholars’ and practitioners’ understanding of the role of stories and “narrative reasoning” in both litigating and judging.
Second, the article posits that when compelling Plaintiff Stories are told in such cases, and when courts choose to hearthose Plaintiff Stories and to elevate those stories over the Story of the Process and the Story of the Law, students and school districts will prevail. However, where, as in Lobato, courts’ choice to minimize—in fact, ignore—the call of those Plaintiff Stories and instead choose to elevate the call of “law” stories or “process” stories, the loss of Plaintiff Stories can mean the loss of justice or, at minimum, the delay or deferral of justice. These three story types often intersect in cases. This article does not contend that every time a court rejects a plaintiff’s story that the outcome is unjust. Rather, it contends that in school- finance cases, such may be the result when the constitutional standard wielded by the court relies more on the stories of process or law than those told by the plaintiffs.
An Afterword to this story about story proposes future projects and reflects on how the Plaintiffs’ ultimate loss in Lobato might nonetheless engender meaningful reform for school finance in Colorado, as well as how the stories told in Lobato can further scholars’ and practitioners’ understanding of the power of storytelling.
* Visiting Assistant Professor of Law, Texas Tech University School of Law; LL.M. Harvard Law School (2001); J.D., Washington College of Law, American University (1999). I would like to thank Kenneth Chestek and my former colleague at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law, Nantiya Ruan, for their helpful feedback on early drafts of this article. Additional thanks go out to my research assistants, Marissa Malouff, Megan Moses, and Nick Santucci.