Education 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 …

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.

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.

The Problem Of Religious Learning, Marc O. Degirolami

Scholarly Articles

The problem of religious learning is that religion-including the teaching about religion-must be separated from liberal public education, but that the two cannot be entirely separated if the aims of liberal public education are to be realized. It is a problem that has gone largely unexamined by courts, constitutional scholars, and other legal theorists. Though the U.S. Supreme Court has offered a few terse statements about the permissibility of teaching about religion in its Establishment Clause jurisprudence, and scholars frequently urge policies for or against such controversial subjects as Intelligent Design or graduation prayers, insuffi- cient attention has been paid …

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 …

A Post-Morse Framework For Students' Potentially Hurtful Speech (Religious And Otherwise), Emily Gold Waldman

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

In this Article, I weave together strands from Tinker, Fraser, and Morse, as well as from lower court decisions taking varying approaches to this issue, to propose a new standard for student speech that is potentially hurtful to other students. This approach encompasses, without being limited to, speech that is religiously-motivated in nature. I argue that student speech that is hurtful to other students (whether religiously-motivated or not) should first be divided into two categories: (1) speech that identifies particular students for attack; and (2) speech, such as the message on Harper's T-shirt, that expresses a general opinion without being …

Simply Put: How Diversity Benefits Whites And How Whites Can Simply Benefit Diversity, Angela Mae Kupenda

Journal Articles

Although there are surmountable legal barriers to racial integration in education, fuller integration is possible. But first, whites must see how they benefit from diversity, and, second, whites must take simple steps toward integration that may, in turn, reveal to whites their desire to become more fully integrated. These two steps may help remove the limiting point to true integration.

The Invisible Pregnant Athlete And The Promise Of Title Ix, Deborah Brake

Articles

The question of how law should respond to women who become pregnant, and whether to specially accommodate pregnancy or analogize it to other conditions, features prominently in virtually every area of sex equality law. In debates over women's equality in the workplace, for example, it has been the defining issue for the development of and debate over various models of equality in feminist legal theory. Until recently, however, the issue has been all but absent in debates and discussion about Title IX and its promise of sex equality in sports. This changed suddenly in 2007, when ESPN televised a program …

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

Articles

This article examines how race and educational equity issues shape women's sports experiences, building upon the narrative of Darnellia Russell, a high school basketball player profiled in the documentary The Heart of the Game. Darnellia is a star player who, because of an unintended pregnancy, has to fight to play the game she loves.

This girl's story provides a unique and underutilized lens through which to examine gender and athletics, as well as evaluate the legal framework for gender equality in sport. In focusing on this narrative, we seek to give voice to black female athletes and to express their …