Education Commons^™

Quasi-Public Spending, John R. Brooks

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The United States has increasingly designed certain public spending programs not as traditional tax-financed programs, but rather as mixtures of private expenditures, subsidies, and limited taxes. Thus part of what could have gone to the government as a tax is instead used to purchase the good or service directly, with only incremental taxes and subsidies to manage distributional goals. This Article terms this “quasi-public spending,” and argues that it is descriptive of our evolving approaches to both health care and higher education. Based on this observation, the Article defines and analyzes quasipublic spending and compares it to both traditional public …

Creating Space For Silence In Law School Collaborations, A. Rachel Camp

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Law school programs are increasingly expanding collaborative experiences for their students. In many clinical programs, collaboration -- through team pairings and group work – has been the norm, and gradually, collaborative work is being developed throughout the doctrinal law school curriculum. This trend fits within a broader societal emphasis on a collaborative model of working and learning. In both professional and educational settings, collaboration is viewed as critical to the success of ideas and products. Learning theory consistently identifies learning as being “inherently social” and best retained when engaged in with others. And, collaboration can substantially benefit the final work …

Meyer, Pierce, And The History Of The Entire Human Race: Barbarism, Social Progress, And (The Fall And Rise Of) Parental Rights, Jeffrey Shulman

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Long before the Supreme Court’s seminal parenting cases took a due process Lochnerian turn, American courts had been working to fashion family law doctrine on the premise that parents are only entrusted with custody of the child, and then only as long as they meet their fiduciary duty to take proper care of the child. With its progressive, anti-patriarchal orientation, this jurisprudence was in part a creature of its time, reflecting the evolutionary biases of the emerging fields of sociology, anthropology, and legal ethnohistory. In short, the courts embraced the new, “scientific” view that social “progress” entails the decline and, …

The Social Value Of Academic Freedom Defended, J. Peter Byrne

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This essay argues for the social value of academic freedom in law schools and in the university generally. It takes explicit issue with the arguments of Stanley Fish in Versions of Academic Freedom: From Professionalism to Revolution. The essay maintains that academic freedom is essential to a liberal society and deserving of constitutional protection because scholarship and teaching governed by disciplinary norms represents modernity's best secular effort at separating truth from falsehood.

Process, Practice, And Principle: Teaching National Security Law And The Knowledge That Matters Most, James E. Baker

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The meaningful application of national security law requires a commitment to substantive knowledge, good process, and a capacity to cope (and indeed thrive) under the prevailing conditions of practice. This paper describes how and why to teach these three essential elements of national security law from an academic and practitioner perspective.

The paper starts with substantive law, placing emphasis not just on the breadth of knowledge and interpretive skills required, but also on the importance of depth, perspective, theory, purpose, history, and legal values in teaching the law. Next, the paper describes the importance of timely, meaningful, and contextual process, …

Special Education, Poverty, And The Limits Of Private Enforcement, Eloise Pasachoff

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This Article examines the appropriate balance between public and private enforcement of statutes seeking to distribute resources or social services to a socioeconomically diverse set of beneficiaries through a case study of the federal special education law, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). It focuses particularly on the extent to which the Act’s enforcement regime sufficiently enforces the law for the poor. The Article responds to the frequent contention that private enforcement of statutory regimes is necessary to compensate for the shortcomings of public enforcement. Public enforcement, the story goes, is inefficient and relies on underfunded, captured, or impotent …

Using Discourse Analysis Methodology To Teach "Legal English", Craig Hoffman

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In this study, I propose a curriculum focused on raising students’ linguistic awareness through rigorous discourse analysis and reflective writing in a legal context. Students analyze authentic, full-text legal documents using discourse analysis methodology. By carefully analyzing the language in legal opinions, appellate briefs, law review articles, law school exams, typical commercial contracts, and statutes, students become experts in analyzing and evaluating legal texts. Students learn to manipulate legal language to achieve various desired linguistic and legal effects. This approach has three primary advantages. First, it forces the students to carefully read authentic legal texts. Second, it gives students the …

The Parent As (Mere) Educational Trustee: Whose Education Is It, Anyway?, Jeffrey Shulman

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The purpose of this Article is two-fold. First, the Article argues that the parent’s right to educate his or her children is strictly circumscribed by the parent’s duty to ensure that children learn habits of critical reasoning and reflection. The law has long recognized that the state’s duty to educate children is superior to any parental right. Indeed, the “parentalist” position to the contrary rests on an inflation of rights that is, in fact, a radical departure from longstanding legal norms. Indeed, at common law the parent had “a sacred right” to the custody of his child, and the parent’s …

Jupiter As Everyman: Michael Reisman And The Scholar As Teacher, James E. Baker

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

These are Chief Judge Baker’s remarks reflecting on the scholarship of Professor Michael Reisman in the field of national security law. Chief Judge Baker comments that Professor Reisman is a prolific writer and Scholar-Teacher dedicated to the study of force, minimization of suffering, and the advancement of human dignity and the law. He discusses how Professor Reisman’s work is distinctive in that it identifies and incorporates the critical influence of process, both formal and informal, in decisionmaking, which sometimes overshadows substance.