Law Commons^™

A No-Contest Discharge For Uncollectible Student Loans, Brook E. Gotberg, Matthew Bruckner, Dalie Jimenez, Chrystin Ondersma

Faculty Publications

Over forty-four million Americans owe more than $1.6 trillion in student loan debt. This debt is nearly impossible to discharge in bankruptcy. Attempting to do so may require costly and contentious litigation with the Department of Education. And because the Department typically fights every case, even initial success can be followed by years of appeals. As a result, few student loan borrowers attempt to discharge their student loan debt in bankruptcy.

In this Article, we call on the Department of Education to develop a set of ten easily ascertainable and verifiable circumstances in which it will not contest a debtor’s …

The People V. Their Universities: How Popular Discontent Is Reshaping Higher Education Law, Ben L. Trachtenberg

Faculty Publications

Surveys taken since 2015 reveal that Americans exhibit stark partisan divisions in their opinions about colleges and universities, with recent shifts in attitudes driving changes to higher education law. In recent years, Democrats have become slightly more positive about higher education. Concurrently, Republicans have become extremely more negative, and a majority of Republicans now tells pollsters that colleges and universities have an overall negative effect on the country.

Particularly in legislative chambers controlled by Republicans, public and elite dissatisfaction with higher education has led to legal interventions into the governance of universities, with new laws related to faculty tenure, the …

The 2015 University Of Missouri Protests And Their Lessons For Higher Education Policy And Administration, Ben L. Trachtenberg

Faculty Publications

In the tradition of legal narrative and storytelling, this Article explores how the University of Missouri managed to fare so badly after students began protesting during the fall of 2015. It draws upon both public sources and the author's own observations as a faculty leader. The Article reviews the details and context of the Missouri protests and then presents a case study of crisis management and conflict resolution gone awry. Applying observations about higher education policy and administration to the phenomenon of student protests - particularly those related to race - the Article identifies potential pitfalls for university administrators and …

Zero Tolerance Policies: Criminalizing Childhood And Disenfranchising The Next Generation Of Citizens, S. David Mitchell

Faculty Publications

A juvenile adjudication of guilt has far more drastic consequences than existed just ten years ago ... Some of these consequences may not be apparent for a number of years, but their possibility should be anticipated, fully considered, and planned for, wherever possible. Under zero tolerance, students are suspended, expelled, or referred to juvenile authorities or some combination thereof for specified offenses. Zero tolerance policies punish students harshly regardless of the severity of the infraction, the existence of mitigating circumstances, or the context in which the conduct occurred. Part II discusses the origin and evolution of zero tolerance policies, as …

School Bullying Victimization As An Educational Disability, Douglas E. Abrams

Faculty Publications

Parts I and II of this essay urge school authorities, parents, and other concerned citizens to perceive bullying victimization as a disability that burdens targeted students. Since 1975, the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) has guaranteed “full educational opportunity to all children with disabilities” in every state. The IDEA reaches both congenital disabilities and disabilities that, like bullying victimization, stem from events or circumstances unrelated to biology or birth. To set the context for perceiving bullying victimization as an educational disability, Part I describes the public schools' central role in protecting bullied students, and then briefly discusses the …

Bullying Victimization As A Disability In Public Elementary And Secondary Education, Douglas E. Abrams

Faculty Publications

This article discusses two reasons why likening bullying victimization to an educational disability makes sense. First, face-to-face bullying and cyberbullying impose on student victims the sort of educational deprivation that the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) addresses in the disabilities arena. Second, today’s belated public sensitivity to school bullying victims resembles the belated public sensitivity to students with disabilities that led to passage of the IDEA in 1975.

Recognizing The Public Schools' Authority To Discipline Students' Off-Campus Cyberbullying Of Classmates, Douglas E. Abrams

Faculty Publications

The American Medical Association, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have identified bullying in the public elementary and secondary schools as a "public health problem". This article explains the schools' comprehensive authority, consistent with the First Amendment, to impose discipline on cyberbullies, by suspension or expulsion if necessary. Ever since Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District (1969), the Supreme Court's First Amendment decisions have granted the schools authority to discipline student speech that causes, or reasonably threatens, (1) "substantial disruption of or material interference with school …

Remark: Brown V. Board: Revisited, Michael A. Middleton

Faculty Publications

[T]he Negro needs neither segregated schools nor mixed schools. What he needs is Education. What he must remember is that there is no magic, either in mixed schools or in segregated schools. A mixed school with poor and unsympathetic teachers, with hostile public opinion, and no teaching of truth concerning black folk, is bad. A segregated school with ignorant placeholders, inadequate equipment, poor salaries, and wretched housing, is equally bad. Other things being equal, the mixed school is the broader, more natural basis for the education of all youth. It gives wider contacts; it inspires greater self-confidence; and suppresses the …

Providing An Escape For Inner-City Children: Creating A Federal Remedy For Educational Ills Of Poor Urban Schools, Amy J. Schmitz

Faculty Publications

Children in impoverished, urban areas attend dangerous and decrepit schools, where they receive low quality education which fails to prepare them for meaningful participation in the community. Many states, however, provide no legislative or judicial remedy for these children, who desperately need vocational and educational skills to enable them to escape from the deprivation of their urban landscape. Meanwhile, federal officials speak

Mandatory Student Fees: First Amendment Concerns And University Discretion, Christina E. Wells

Faculty Publications

This Comment analyzes the constitutional issues raised by the use of mandatory student fees to fund speech at public universities. Part I examines the interests of students and universities with respect to the use of such fees. Part II examines court decisions in this area. Part III looks to the nature of student fees and demonstrates that they are permissible exercises of university discretion. Parts IV and V discuss whether the Constitution requires a university, if it funds student organizations by mandatory fees, to fund all organizations equally, without regard to other students' objections to those organizations' viewpoints.

Recovery In Tort For Educational Malpractice: Problems Of Theory And Policy, Robert H. Jerry Ii

Faculty Publications

This Article considers whether denial of a cause of action for educational malpractice is consistent with recognized tort principles and the general policy considerations underlying those principles. After briefly summarizing three lawsuits in which the cause of action has been advocated and rejected, it explores the collision between theory and policy that permeates the decisions. The Article suggests that refusal to recognize the cause of action is incompatible with accepted tort principles, and that a cogent theory supporting nonrecognition cannot be articulated within the confines of the accepted principles and the general policies upon which those principles are based. If …

Board Of Curators Of The University Of Missouri V. Horowitz: Academic Versus Judicial Expertise, R. Lawrence Dessem

Faculty Publications

In Board of Curators of the University of Missouri v. Horowitz' the United States Supreme Court rejected the argument that public university students are constitutionally entitled to a hearing prior to their dismissal from school for academic reasons. In ruling against a former medical student at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, the Court concluded that "the determination whether to dismiss a student for academic reasons requires an expert evaluation of cumulative information and is not readily adapted to the procedural tools of judicial or administrative decisionmaking. ' In this article that conclusion and the several opinions in Horowitz will be …

Student Due Process Rights In Academic Dismissals From The Public Schools, R. Lawrence Dessem

Faculty Publications

This article, however, goes beyond the argument that education is one of the most valuable benefits which government in this country provides. The thesis of the article is that education is not only very important to millions of Americans, but that students have constitutionally protected liberty and property interests in their public educations and the courts should therefore require notice and hearing prior to the deprivation of these interests, even when the deprivation is for strictly academic reasons.