1972—The judicial takeover of school funding in New Jersey commences as state trial judge Theodore Botter rules (in Robinson v. Cahill) that New Jersey’s funding system, which relies heavily on local property taxes, violates the state constitutional provision, dating from 1875, that declares that the legislature “shall provide for the maintenance and support of a thorough and efficient system of free public schools” and also violates the equal-protection guarantees that are supposedly implicit in the state constitution and that are in the federal Constitution.