Law Commons^™

Copyright, Clickers, And Consensus, Jonathan Bacon

SIDLIT Conference Proceedings

A discussion about classroom copyright issues and integrating technology.

The Uncertain Future Of School Desegregation And The Importance Of Goodwill, Good Sense, And A Misguided Decision, Derek W. Black

Faculty Publications

The article was part of a symposium on the jurisprudence of Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. First, the article analyzed whether the Court’s decision in Parents Involved v. Seattle Schools was consistent with Justice O’Connor’s majority opinion in Grutter v. Bollinger. The article concludes that Parents Involved narrowly construed the holding in Grutter and limited its effect. Second, the article assessed the practical import of the decision in Parents Involved. It found that the opinion made voluntary desegregation more difficult than it otherwise would be and, thus, would discourage many school districts from taking progressive action. Unfortunately, the article …

The Availability And Viability Of Socioeconomic Integration Post-Parents Involved, Eboni S. Nelson

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Judicial Decision-Making, Social Science Evidence, And Equal Educational Opportunity: Uneasy Relations And Uncertain Futures, Michael Heise

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Student Speech: Whose Speech Is It Anyway And Why Does The First Amendment Care?, Leora Harpaz

Faculty Scholarship

A key feature of First Amendment speech analysis in the public schools focuses on speaker identity. Speaker identity can play a crucial role in designing the First Amendment landscape on a variety of issues including the right of speakers to gain access to public school forums for expression, the right of student editors to control the content of school-sponsored publications, and the right of school administrators to permit religious speech in the public school setting. Courts faced with decisions about whether speech in the public school setting is private or government speech must consider the context in which the speech …

Sanctionable Conduct: How The Supreme Court Stealthily Opened The Schoolhouse Gate, Sonja R. West

Scholarly Works

The Supreme Court's decision in Morse v. Frederick signaled that public school authority over student expression extends beyond the schoolhouse gate. This authority may extend to any activity in which a student participates that the school has officially sanctioned. The author argues that this decision is unsupported by precedent, and could encourage schools to sanction more events in the future. Because the Court failed to limit or define the power of a school to sanction an activity, the decision could have a chilling effect on even protected student expression. The author commends the Court for taking up this issue after …

Introduction: Umkc Sports Law Symposium: Emerging Legal Issues Affection Amateur & Professional Sports, Kenneth D. Ferguson

Faculty Works

Introduction to the 2007 University of Missouri-Kansas City Law School’s inaugural Sports Law Symposium. The symposium created a forum that contributed to developing intellectual synergies among national sports law scholars, practicing sports law attorneys, athletic directors, coaches, sports industry professionals, and, importantly, student-athletes. The engagements created revolved around the theme of emerging legal issues affecting amateur and professional sports. The symposium featured scholarly presentations in the amateur and professional sports areas. Scholarly inquiry focused on a range of topics, from the economic and legal issues affecting the coaching profession to balancing gender and minority gender equity under Title IX. The …

Blurring The Boundary Lines Between Amateur And Professional Sports, Kenneth D. Ferguson

Faculty Works

The NCAA expends substantial resources to insure that the distinction between amateur and professional sports is maintained in collegiate athletics. Preserving the boundary lines between amateur and professional sports is more than an attempt to ensure philosophical purity or a nostalgic quest for historic preservation. The boundaries between amateur and professional sports are maintained by legal doctrines in several areas.

Application of tort law to coaches' liability for conduct leading to injuries to athletes reflects and preserves the boundary lines between professional and amateur sports. Although the implied assumption of risk doctrine should preserve that distinction, some courts have applied …

Undressing Difference: The Hijab In The West, Anita L. Allen

All Faculty Scholarship

On March 15, 2006, French President Jacques Chirac signed into law an amendment to his country’s education statute, banning the wearing of "conspicuous" signs of religious affiliation in public schools. Prohibited items included "a large cross, a veil, or skullcap." The ban was expressly introduced by lawmakers as an application of the principle of government neutrality, "du principe de laïcité." Opponents of the law viewed it primarily as an intolerant assault against the hijab, a head and neck wrap worn by many Muslim women around the world. In Politics of the Veil, Professor Joan Wallach Scott …

Simplify You, Classify You: Stigma, Stereotypes And Civil Rights In Disability Classification Systems, Michael L. Perlin

Articles & Chapters

In this paper I consider the question of the extent to which sanism and pretextuality - the factors that contaminate all of mental disability law - do or do not equally contaminate the special education process, and the decision to label certain children as learning disabled. The thesis of this paper is that the process of labeling of children with intellectual disabilities implicates at least five conflicts and clusters of policy issues:

* The need to insure that all children receive adequate education

* The need to insure that the cure is not worse than the illness (that is, that …

The Heart Of The Game: Putting Race And Educational Equity At The Center Of Title Ix, Verna L. Williams

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

This article examines how race and educational equity issues shape women's sports experiences.

Failing Students Or Failing Schools?: Holding States Accountable For The High School Dropout Crisis, Deborah N. Archer

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

The Evolution Of Special Education, Kelli J. Esteves, Shaila Rao

Scholarship and Professional Work – Education

The events that have driven the gradual and progressive evolution of special education serve as a backdrop to understanding the foundation of the field and its ever-changing nature. Knowledge of this history is critical if we intend to make further progress.

Citizen Teacher: Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don't, Susan P. Stuart

Law Faculty Publications

The recent Supreme Court case of Garcetti v. Ceballos is becoming one of the most-used cases in its mere two-year history. It denies to public employees the protection of the First Amendment when speaking in their official duties. In reviewing the cases both leading up to and then relying oh Garcetti, one is struck by the inherent conflict that nowpermeates some school board-employee relationships. Whereas preceding cases attempted to reach a balance between the school board and its employees' speech rights, bad management practices now seem to trump the First Amendment. Such practices have school boards discharging teachers and …

Full Sp[ ]Ed Ahead: Expanding The Idea Idea To Let All Students Ride The Same Bus, Stephen A. Rosenbaum

Publications

Some commentators and public officials have suggested that the schoolhouse door to special education services has opened too widely and too indiscriminately... under the Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA). In her Article responding to calls to shrink the eligibility definition, Professor Wendy Hensel alludes to The Short Bus that students with disabilities often ride. Meanwhile, No Child Left Behind (NCLB) — the most significant federal education policy reform in place for general education students — dictates a level of academic progress and instructional interventions to assist all pupils — those with disabilities along with other marginalized students.

In this Essay, …

Educating At The Crossroads: Parents Involved, No Child Left Behind And School Choice, Danielle R. Holley-Walker

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Lock & Load? The 2nd Amendment Arrives On Campus, Porcher L. Taylor Iii, Beth Anne Simonds

School of Professional and Continuing Studies Faculty Publications

Thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court’s watershed decision regarding the Second Amendment in June, state lawmakers, university policymakers and campus safety personnel nationwide face a conundrum that must be answered in a prudent way. The solution will greatly impact the daily lives of everyone on campus.

Suicide On Campus: The Appropriate Legal Responsibility Of College Personnel, Ann Maclean Massie

Scholarly Articles

No abstract provided.

Returning To Hazelwood's Core: A New Approach To Restrictions On School-Sponsored Speech, Emily Gold Waldman

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

The Article begins by discussing the Hazelwood decision in depth. It then discusses the various contexts in which courts have applied Hazelwood and the circuit split that has developed over how broadly Hazelwood should reach. Next, it describes the circuit split over whether Hazelwood permits viewpoint-based speech restrictions, highlighting the different speech contexts in which the circuits have reached divergent conclusions. The Article then argues that the overextension of Hazelwood links the two splits. This Part also discusses why Hazelwood is uniquely suited to the student speech context and why other doctrines-namely, the Pickering-Connick framework for teachers' classroom speech and …

Sloppy Joe, Slop, Sloppy Joe: How Usda Commodities Dumping Ruined The National School Lunch Program, J. Amy Dillard

All Faculty Scholarship

Just as the scales beneath the feet of our nation's children are reaching a tipping point, so too is the social movement of providing local, organic foods for America's schoolchildren. This is welcome news to Alice Waters and others who have long-promoted the health and lifestyle benefits of consuming whole, organic, locally grown and produced foods. Change is under way in many districts around the country; one of the most promising is the Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD), which has undergone a complete overhaul of its school lunch program under the leadership of the "Renegade Lunch Lady," Chef Ann Cooper. …

Can There Really Be "Free Speech" In Public Schools?, Richard W. Garnett

Journal Articles

The Supreme Court's decision in Morse v. Frederick leaves unresolved many interesting and difficult problems about the authority of public-school officials to regulate public-school students' speech. Perhaps the most intriguing question posed by the litigation, decision, and opinions in More is one that the various Justices who wrote in the case never squarely addressed: What is the "basic education mission" of public schools, and what are the implications of this "mission" for officials' authority and students' free-speech rights. Given what we have come to think the Free Speech clause means, and considering the values it is thought to enshrine and …

Taking Stock Of Student Rights Forty Years After Tinker, Stephen Wermiel

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

Undercover Power: Examining The Role Of The Executive Branch In Determining The Meaning And Scope Of School Integration Jurisprudence, Lia Epperson

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

Mary Beth Tinker, Stephen Wermiel

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

Race-Conscious Student Assignment Plans After Parents Involved: Bringing State Action Principles To Bear On The De Jure/De Facto Distinction, Michael Wells

Scholarly Works

In Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1, a sharply divided Supreme Court struck down two race-conscious school assignment plans aimed at achieving greater racial integration of the public schools. Taking Parents Involved as a starting point, this Article looks ahead to the future of litigation over student assignment plans. By striking down the Seattle and Louisville plans, the decision may "require hundreds of school districts to rethink race-based policies that they use voluntarily to desegregate schools." At the very least, the 5-4 ruling almost certainly did not put an end to race-conscious integration plans or …

The Need For Equal Opportunity And A Right To Quality Education, Stephen Wermiel, Paul Wockstein

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

Don't Count Them Out Just Yet: Toward The Plausible Use Of Race-Preference Student Assignment Plans, Leslie Yalof Garfield

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Contrary to conventional wisdom, the Supreme Court's recent decision in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 11 could serve to broaden the permissible use of race beyond the boundaries presently permitted by the Court. In this highly fractionalized decision, five justices ultimately agreed that the race-based student assignment plans before their review could not withstand judicial scrutiny. One of these justices, Justice Kennedy, agreed with the plurality's conclusion, but rejected the plurality's assessment that it is never permissible to use race-preference student assignment plans absent evidence of de jure segregation. His concurrence, when read together with …

Lessons Learned From Comparing The Application Of Constitutional Law And Anti-Discrimination Law To African Americans In The U.S. And Dalits In India In The Context Of Higher Education, Kevin D. Brown, Vinay Sitapati

Articles by Maurer Faculty

In this Article the authors will compare the development of constitutional law and federal anti-discrimination law in the context of higher education of African-Americans in the U.S. and Dalits in India. Both groups suffer from oppression and discrimination based upon a hereditary trait and related to their integration into mainstream society; neither group is completely isolated from the majority population responsible for the discrimination; and African-Americans and Dalits approximate similar percentages of their country's population. Based upon the 2000 census, African-Americans constitute 12.7% of the American populations, and, according to the 1991 Census Report of India, Dalits make up 16.5% …

Slipping Through The Cracks And Into Schools: The Need For A Uniform Sexual Predator Tracking System, Cheryl Page

Journal Publications

Over half a million registered sex offenders currently live in the United States. Sex offenses are among the most devastating crimes because of the long-lasting emotional, physical, and psychological effects it has on victims. Sadly, most victims of sex offenses are innocent children. "Most sex offenders are not in prison, and ... are largely unknown to people in the community." Sex offenders also have a propensity for reoffending their crimes. "While community supervision and oversight is widely recognized as essential, the system for providing such supervision is overwhelmed." There are many loopholes in the current system that allow sex offenders …

Non-Education In America: Gateway To Subsistence Living, Cheryl Page

Journal Publications

Dropout rates are the proverbial canary-in-the-coal-mine. If ever there was a predictor of poverty, discrimination, abuse, neglect, inability to parent-in short the suffering of an entire generation-it is the lack of experience and education we are affording our minority students. This lack of education is invariably accompanied by lack of not only opportunity, but sustainability. We have a potential generation of students unable to make their way through life independent of government support. The worst crime in a capitalist society is to leave an entire group without the skill set to compete. Perhaps the biggest hurdle to objectively identifying schools …