On Realizing the World-Class University: Litigation and the State

Abstract

This chapter examines Dickinson v. Mälardalen University as an empirical manifestation of state action for creating and maintaining world-class universities (WCUs). It advances the argument that while litigation has long been assumed to play a far more limited role in higher education (HE) than it does in other areas of public policy, this element of governing fuels a different form of state building, in which courts and judges—sometimes from even the mere existence or threat of their intervention—can play a crucial role in WCU development. At the same time, we need to ask a variety of questions about the outcomes of lawsuits and their effects on HE. Does litigation have the effect of realizing the WCU, or does it not matter at all whether policy goals are pressed in courts or through legislation and professional choices? If it does matter, how and why? This chapter argues that a turn to the courts and a reliance on more formal, less malleable rules is not merely an alternative route to the same goal; litigation matters because law is different, because judicial decision-making shapes and constrains HE politics and policy in important ways.