Law Commons^™

It's Alright, Ma, It's Life And Life Only: Have Universities Been Meeting Their Legal Obligations To High-Risk Faculty During The Pandemic?, Gary J. Simson, Mark L. Jones, Cathren K. Page, Suzianne D. Painter-Thorne

Pepperdine Law Review

Even those universities most firmly committed to returning to in-person instruction in fall semester 2020 recognized that for health reasons some exceptions would need to be made. The CDC had identified two groups—people age sixty-five and over and people with certain medical conditions—as persons "at increased risk of severe illness from COVID-19," and it had spelled out various special precautions they should take to avoid contracting the virus. Given the CDC's unique stature, universities very reasonably could have been expected to grant exceptions to faculty falling into either group, but that's not what many universities did. We argue that, properly …

Homeward Bound: The Current Rise Of Homeschooling And The Need For Regulation, Mary Fletcher

SLU Law Journal Online

With the rise of the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of American homeschoolers has drastically increased. While all fifty states have passed legislation allowing for homeschooling, regulations of homeschooling vary from state-to-state, with some states having virtually no regulation at all. In this essay, Mary Fletcher examines homeschooling laws and discusses the need for consistent federal regulation to ensure that homeschooled students receive an adequate education.

No Teacher Left Behind: Reforming The Educators Expense Deduction, Mary Morris

Indiana Law Journal

American educators are notoriously overworked and underpaid. With high performance demands and near-stagnant pay, teachers tend to burn out quickly, which in turn negatively affects the quality of education that their students receive. This effect is most evident in Title I schools, public schools with low funding allocation and high concentrations of low-income students.

One of the benefits that teachers do receive is the Educators Expense Deduction, a federal income tax deduction permitting teachers to write off up to $250 of unreimbursed supplies purchased for the classroom. This deduction was codified in 2002 and has not been amended since, in …

A Case Study Of Private School Choice And Education Litigation In South Carolina: Safe Grants And Adams V. Mcmaster (S.C. 2020), Lyndsey Katherine Ebener

Senior Theses

The ideology behind private school choice endures in South Carolina. Arguments for parental choice have resurfaced periodically throughout the state’s history, particularly in moments of “crisis.” The current “crisis” moment is the COVID-19 pandemic, which created a perfect storm for the private school choice movement to gain momentum. When Governor McMaster received South Carolina’s emergency education relief funds, he capitalized on this movement with his proposed SAFE Grants program. His intention was for the SAFE Grants program to provide support through one-time tuition grants to low-income families who have children in private schools. Governor McMaster’s announcement incited an overwhelming media …

Unsafe At Any Campus: Don't Let Colleges Become The Next Cruise Ships, Nursing Homes, And Food Processing Plants, Peter H. Huang, Debra S. Austin Dr

Indiana Law Journal

The decision to educate our students via in-person or online learning environments while COVID-19 is unrestrained is a false choice, when the clear path to achieve our chief objective safely, the education of our students, can be done online. Our decision-making should be guided by the overriding principle that people matter more than money. We recognize that lost tuition revenue if students delay or defer education is an institutional concern, but we posit that many students and parents would prefer a safer online alternative to riskier in-person options, especially as we get closer to fall, and American death tolls rise. …

Clinicians Reflect On Covid-19: Lessons Learned And Looking Beyond, The Association Of American Law Schools (Aals) Policy Committee, Deborah Archer, Caitlin Barry, Lisa Bliss, Gautam Hans, Vida Johnson, Carolyn Haas, Lynnise E. Pantin, Kele Stewart, Erica Wilson, The Clinical Legal Education Association (Clea) Committee For Faculty Equity And Inclusion, Priya Baskaran, Jennifer Fernandez, Crystal Grant, Anjum Gupta, Julia Hernandez, Alexis Karteron, Shobha Mahadev

Faculty Scholarship

As a result of the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic, clinical faculty had to abruptly adapt their clinical teaching and case supervision practices to adjust to the myriad restrictions brought on by the pandemic. This brought specialized challenges for clinicians who uniquely serve as both legal practitioners and law teachers in the law school setting. With little support and guidance, clinicians tackled never before seen difficulties in the uncharted waters of running a clinical law practice during a pandemic.

In this report, we review the responses of 220 clinicians to survey questions relating to how law clinics and clinicians were treated by …