Howard Manning Jr. peers over his glasses at the young inmates in striped jumpsuits who stand to face him in Wake County's Courtroom 3A. One by one, they plead guilty: second-degree murder, burglary, assault.

This is the dreary part of a Superior Court judge's work, the end-of-the-line declaration that nothing else has helped. On this mid-November morning, the room is nearly empty as Manning sends the guilty to prison. Around noon, he is done.

Manning takes off his black robe, hops in his 2003 Mercury Grand Marquis and drives to Chapel Hill to speak to dozens of school principals. His style is a mixture of irreverence and dry wit, and his message is blunt. "Some of your high schools," Manning declares, "are about as sorry as I've ever seen."

Courtrooms to classrooms. Howard Manning has seen the worst of each, and he has noticed a connection. Almost none of the felons in his courtroom ever did much in school, and school never did much for them.

"They are your responsibility as principal," he says to the school leaders. "There's no place to hide."

For principals and state legislators, there's a warning in those words. Manning isn't the first judge to link bad schools with bad lives. But he's the one who has done the most about it on a statewide scale -- and he's just getting started.

Two years ago, Manning ordered that every public classroom in the state have a caring, qualified teacher, and every school have sufficient resources and be led by a competent principal. This summer, the state Supreme Court upheld Manning's rulings in the long-running case, Leandro vs. the State of North Carolina.

The decisions have huge implications for students, educators and taxpayers. Eventually, they could add up to better schools -- and hundreds of millions a year in increased spending. Already, Gov. Mike Easley has had to scrape together $22 million as a first step, with the money going to 16 of the state's poorest districts. The case rose out of conditions in five poor school systems but was expanded by Manning to consider educational opportunities for children across the state.

The Republican judge had more impact on public schools this year than any other state leader, Easley included.

The schools case is the latest episode in the lifelong education of Howdy Manning, the eldest son of a prominent Raleigh lawyer. Manning grew up knowing a comfortable life, but he has become a champion of disadvantaged children.

He has handled the case in unorthodox ways, speaking his mind in often colorful, plain English and writing long-winded opinions.

Even as the Supreme Court sided with him on his ruling, the justices noted its 400-page heft and the "free-wheeling nature of the trial court's order."

Critics say he has taken the law too far.

"Judge Manning is the most activist judge since I don't know when," says Sabra Faires, counsel for House co-speaker Richard Morgan, a Republican from Moore County. "He issues these rambling opinions that, once you get done with them, it's hard to know what he wants. Then he gets mad when he perceives us as being slow to react."

When he's angry, Manning spares few: indifferent legislators, uncaring teachers, ineffective principals, arrogant administrators, blue-ribbon commissions, pointy-shoed experts from up North.

"I'm carrying out my responsibility as I see it," he says. "You have to push people to make things move in the direction that the law requires. You can't be a wallflower and do that.

"The law applies to everyone across the board, not just the privileged few."

Next page >