Digital Commons Network^™

You Are Now Entering The School Zone, Proceed With Caution: Educators, Arbitration, & Children’S Rights, Raquel Muniz

Arbitration Law Review (Penn State University)

This article first provides background information on CBAs and arbitration clauses in public employee labor relations contracts to underscore the evolving relationship between the employer and employees. This background is important to assess the feasibility of the safeguards proposed later. Next, this article will explore arbitration cases in school employer-educator union CBAs, focusing particularly on employee disciplinary matters. Then, this article will explain why primary and secondary public schools should be categorized as a sui generis sphere in which consequences of arbitrable disciplinary matters extend beyond the traditional public employer-employee relation. Finally, this article will propose workable and sustainable safeguards …

Freeing Speech And The First Amendment Value Of Promoting Public Discussion, Chapin F. Cimino

Thurgood Marshall Law Review (Texas Southern University)

“Freeing Speech” contributes to the existing academic debate around the virtues and vices of freedom of information act (“FOIA”) requests, and specifically, to the much-discussed problem of judicial under-enforcement of both federal FOIA and state right-to-know law actions. Freeing Speech offers a new insight into this problem, which is that often courts simply do not see the First Amendment implications of these cases. The article coins the phrase promoting speech, and argues that this First Amendment value undergirds the entire right-to-know statutory scheme. Yet this value remains hidden in these cases, as adjudicating a right-to-know claim does not require …

Beyond Jurisprudence, Alan Calnan

Saint Louis University Law Journal

This article takes a new approach to legal theory. Because it views law as part of a complex natural system, it uses complex systems theory as its central investigative framework. Unlike traditional jurisprudence, which separates human artifacts from nature, complexity theory shows that human and natural systems are interdependent. Such systems cannot be studied in isolation, but require consilience. Consilience unites knowledge from the natural sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities. By merging consilience with complexity theory, the article moves beyond jurisprudence toward “jurisilience.”

Jurisilience shows that law is a complex cultural system caused by complex social systems of …

Professional Standards And The First Amendment In Higher Education: When Institutional Academic Freedom Collides With Student Speech Rights, Clay Calvert

Saint Louis University Law Journal

This article analyzes the disturbingly growing use of external professional standards by public colleges and universities to squelch students’ First Amendment speech rights. Using the 2016 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit in Keefe v. Adams and the 2015 decision by the Ninth Circuit in Oyama v. University of Hawaii as analytical springboards, the article exposes the tension between two competing First Amendment rights – the institutional academic freedom of public universities to control curricula and the free speech rights of public university students both on and off campus. Without guidance from the Supreme Court, …

Famous On The Internet: The Spectrum Of Internet Memes And The Legal Challenge Of Evolving Methods Of Communication, Stacey M. Lantagne

University of Richmond Law Review

On a daily basis, millions of Internet users re-blog, re-tweet, and re-post the content of others on social media. It is conduct that has led to a flourishing social Internet culture, but it is also conduct that implicates many clashing interests. For some, an Internet meme is a work of their own creativity whose co-option by the Internet at large is an act of infringement. For others, an Internet meme is a violation of their privacy resulting in severe emotional distress. For still others, an Internet meme is a vital communicative tool expressing particular ideas that cannot be articulated in …