If we on the Editorial Board had to come up with a list of the most important cases in the 378-year history of Connecticut, Horton v. Meskill, 172 Conn. 615 (1976), and Sheff v. O'Neill, 238 Conn. 1 (1995), would make the list. Without the persistence of Simon Bernstein, a retired Superior Court judge who died in May at the age of 100, the plaintiffs would not have succeeded in either one of those cases.
In 1965, under pressure from the federal courts to remedy Connecticut's malapportioned state Senate and dreadfully malapportioned state House of Representatives, the state Democratic and Republican leaders agreed to call a constitutional convention to remedy the problem. Simon Bernstein was a delegate from Bloomfield. Noting that Connecticut was the only state whose constitution made no reference to education, Bernstein submitted a provision on the subject in the first week of the convention.
