Law Commons^™

The Lost Promise Of Disability Rights, Claire Raj

Michigan Law Review

Children with disabilities are among the most vulnerable students in public schools. They are the most likely to be bullied, harassed, restrained, or segregated. For these and other reasons, they also have the poorest academic outcomes. Overcoming these challenges requires full use of the laws enacted to protect these students’ affirmative right to equal access and an environment free from discrimination. Yet, courts routinely deny their access to two such laws—the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (section 504).

Courts too often overlook the affirmative obligations contained in these two disability rights …

The Supreme Court And Public Schools, Erwin Chemerinsky

Michigan Law Review

Review of Justin Driver's The Schoolhouse Gate: Public Education, the Supreme Court, and the Battle for the American Mind.

Inhibiting Intrastate Inequalities: A Congressional Approach To Ensuring Equal Opportunity To Finance Public Education, Joshua Arocho

Michigan Law Review

What is the purpose of the international law on armed conflict, and why would opponents bent on destroying each other’s capabilities commit to and obey rules designed to limit their choice of targets, weapons, and tactics? Traditionally, answers to this question have been offered on the one hand by moralists who regard the law as being inspired by morality and on the other by realists who explain this branch of law on the basis of reciprocity. Neither side’s answers withstand close scrutiny. In this Article, we develop an alternative explanation that is based on the principal–agent model of domestic governance. …

Context And Trivia, Samuel Brenner

Michigan Law Review

My academic mantra, writes Professor James C. Foster in the Introduction to BONG HiTS 4 JESUS: A Perfect Constitutional Storm in Alaska's Capital, which examines the history and development of the Supreme Court's decision in Morse v. Frederick, "[is] context, context, context" (p. 2). Foster, a political scientist at Oregon State University, argues that it is necessary to approach constitutional law "by situating the U.S. Supreme Court's ... doctrinal work within surrounding historical context, shorn of which doctrine is reduced to arid legal rules lacking meaning and significance" (p. 1). He seeks to do so in BONG HiTS 4 JESUS …

Courthouses Vs. Statehouses?, William S. Koski

Michigan Law Review

Just over twenty years ago, the Kentucky Supreme Court declared the commonwealth's primary and secondary public-education finance system-indeed, the entire system of primary and secondary public education in Kentucky-unconstitutional under the "common schools" clause of the education article in Kentucky's constitution. That case has been widely cited as having ushered in the "adequacy" movement in school-finance litigation and reform, in which those challenging state school-funding schemes argue that the state has failed to ensure that students are provided an adequate education guaranteed by their state constitutions. Since the Rose decision in Kentucky, some thirty-three school-finance lawsuits have reached final decisions …

Profiting From Not For Profit: Toward Adequate Humanities Instruction In American K-12 Schools, Eli Savit

Michigan Law Review

Martha Nussbaum' describes Not For Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities-her paean to a humanities-rich education-as a "manifesto, not an empirical study" (p. 121). Drawing on contemporary psychological research and classic pedagogical theories, Nussbaum convincingly argues that scholastic instruction in the humanities is a critical tool in shaping democratic citizens. Nussbaum shows how the study of subjects like literature, history, philosophy, and art helps students build essential democratic capacities like empathy and critical thought. Through myriad examples and anecdotes, Not For Profit sketches an appealing vision of what an ideal education should be in a democracy.

Can Courts Repair The Crumbling Foundation Of Good Citizenship? An Examination Of Potential Legal Challenges To Social Studies Cutbacks In Public Schools, Eli Savit

Michigan Law Review

In the wake of No Child Left Behind, many public schools have cut or eliminated social studies instruction to allot more time for math and literacy. Given courts' repeated celebration of education as the "foundation of good citizenship," this Note examines potential legal claims and litigation strategies that could be used to compel social studies instruction in public schools. This Note contends that the federal judiciary's civic conception of education leaves the door slightly ajar for a Fourteenth Amendment chrallenge on behalf of social studies-deprived students, but the Supreme Court's refusal in San Antonio v. Rodriguez to recognize education as …

A Narrow Path To Diversity: The Constitutionality Of Rezoning Plans And Strategic Site Selection Of Schools After Parents Involved, Steven T. Collis

Michigan Law Review

Justice Kennedy's concurrence in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District Number 1 raised an important and timely constitutional issue: whether the Constitution permits K-12 public school districts not under existing desegregation orders to use site selection of new schools or rezoning plans to achieve racial diversity. Numerous scholars and journalists have interpreted Justice Kennedy's concurrence as explicitly answering the question in the affirmative. This Note argues that the opposite is true. Justice Kennedy's past jurisprudence, as well as his language in Parents Involved, favors the use of strict scrutiny. Indeed, in Parents Involved, Justice Kennedy …

The Naacp's Legal Strategy Against Segregated Education, Robert L. Carter

Michigan Law Review

A Review of The NAACP's Legal Strategy Against Segregated Education, 1925-1950 by Mark Tushnet

When Honesty Is "Simply…Impractical" For The Supreme Court: How The Constitution Came To Require Busing For School Racial Balance, Lino A. Graglia

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Swann's Way: The School Busing Case and the Supreme Court by Bernard Schwartz

The New American Dilemma: Liberal Democracy And School Desegregation, Mary Jo Newborn

Michigan Law Review

A Review of The New American Dilemma: Liberal Democracy and School Desegregation by Jennifer L. Hochschild

Administrative Regulation Of The High School Press, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

This Note examines the constitutional limits on administrative regulation of publications by and for public high school students. Part I discusses the widely divergent standards adopted by different circuits. Part II describes the hard line the Supreme Court has taken against restraints on free expression in the adult context and the different circumstances that justify limiting freedom of expression in high schools. Part III discusses the timing of administrative regulation of student speech. This Part argues that prior restraint is constitutionally acceptable and, in fact, preferable to subsequent punishment so long as its use is governed by proper criteria. Part …

Education For Self-Government: Reassessing The Role Of The Public School In A Democracy, Charles R. Lawrence Iii

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Compelling Belief: The Culture of American Schooling by Stephen Arons

Plato's Ideal And The Perversity Of Politics, Mark G. Yudof

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Educational Policy Making and the Courts: An Empirical Study of Judicial Activism by Michael A. Rebell and Arthur R. Block

Just Schools: The Idea Of Racial Equality In American Education, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Just Schools: The Idea of Racial Equality in American Education by David L. Kirp

The Limits Of Litigation: Putting The Education Back Into Brown V. Board Of Education, T. Alexander Aleinikoff

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Shades of Brown: New Perspectives on School Desegregation edited by Derrick Bell

Trial And Error: The Detroit School Segregation Case, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Trial and Error: The Detroit School Segregation Case by Eleanor P. Wolf

Britain, Blacks, And Busing, Derrick Bell

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Doing Good By Doing Little: Race and Schooling in Britain by David L. Kirp

Public School Meltdown, Stephen Arons

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Education by Choice: The Case for Family Control by John Coons and Stephen Sugarman

Law, Policy, And The Public Schools, Mark G. Yudof

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Legislated Learning: The Bureaucratization of the American Classroom by Arthur Wise

Black English And Equal Educational Opportunity, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

There is a danger that the King case will be misunderstood. The press has sometimes portrayed it as a vindication of the right to use black English in the classroom rather than of the educational opportunities of the children who speak it, and the King opinion itself is at times confusing. This Note clarifies the meaning of King and section 1703(f) by examining four critical steps in Judge Joiner's reasoning. Section I examines the court's holding that "language barriers" under section l 703(f) include impediments to equal educational opportunity arising from dialect differences, and concludes that although the court's argument …

From Brown To Bakke: The Supreme Court And School Integration: 1954-1978, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A Book Notice about From Brown to Bakke: The Supreme Court and School Integration: 1954-1978 by J. Harvie Wilkinson III

Local Taxes, Federal Courts, And School Desegregation In The Proposition 13 Era, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

This Note examines a federal court's dilemma when the remedy of school desegregation collides with the trend of tax limitation - when a school desegregation order requires funds that the local school authorities do not have and cannot raise. Can the district court order a local tax levy to fund school desegregation when the school authorities have already reached their maximum taxing limit? Is there a better alternative remedy?

To tackle those questions, this Note first elucidates three equitable principles to guide courts in fashioning desegregation decrees. It then explores the history of judicial power to order state and local …

Education And The Law: State Interests And Individual Rights, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

No government activity exerts a more pervasive influence on Americans for a longer period of their lives than the regulation of education. The state seeks through its educational system to achieve two goals: the development of the basic reading, writing and other academic skills that any productive member of society must possess; and the inculcation of values deemed essential for a cohesive, harmonious and law-abiding society. Basically, through uniformity and standardization of the education experience the state attempts to guarantee that children will not become liabilities to society and that a minimal acceptance of shared values and norms will be …

Voucher Systems Of Public Education After Nyquist And Sloan: Can A Constitutional System Be Devised?, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

Criticism of the present system of American elementary and secondary education has rekindled interest in the idea, first proposed by Adam Smith, of providing parents with vouchers to purchase their children's education. The basic elements of a voucher plan are simple. Parents are given vouchers worth roughly the per pupil cost of education in their city. These vouchers can be used to purchase education at any public or private school that meets the accreditation requirements imposed by the state. Such a system would increase the ability of parents and children to choose among various options in the education market, a …

Constitutional Law--Church And State--Freedom Of Religion--The Constitutionality Under The Religion Clauses Of The First Amendment Of Compulsory Sex Education In Public Schools, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

It has been said that "[s]ex education, once the domain of the church and the home, has by necessity, become a responsibility of the schools." Indeed, by the operation of most state education statutes, sex education can be made compulsory in public primary and secondary schools if it is taught as part of otherwise compulsory classes or if the local school authorities have prescribed sex education courses as a compulsory part of the curriculum. While some of the state statutes authorize exemptions on religious grounds, most do not. Nevertheless, the introduction of sex education into public schools has not been …

The Evolution Of A Collective Bargaining Relationship In Public Education: New York City's Changing Seven-Year History, Ida Klaus

Michigan Law Review

The bargaining relationship between the New York City Board of Education and its teachers had its roots in the social forces of the mid-fifties and its formal origins in the events of the early sixties. The relationship came about without benefit of law or executive policy. No law permitting public employees to bargain collectively was in effect anywhere in those years, and Mayor Wagner's 1958 Executive Order-the culmination of three years of study and public inquiry-did not apply to teachers. Instead, the impetus came directly from the persistent and increasingly powerful drive of the teachers themselves. They demanded a substantial …

The Coming Revolution In Public School Management, Donald H. Wollett

Michigan Law Review

Dr. James Conant has commented on ·what he views as "concurrent educational revolutions"-changes in methods of instruction, in curriculum emphasis, and in public school financing-which portend radical revision in the methods of determining educational policy. However, thus far neither Dr. Conant nor any other observer of similar stature has addressed himself seriously to a fourth educational revolution-in-the-making: the direct involvement of teachers, through structured collective negotiations, in the management of public elementary and secondary school systems. This Article will focus on that coming revolution.

The Fourteenth Amendment And The "Separate But Equal" Doctrine, Joseph S. Ransmeier

Michigan Law Review

Recent cases in which the Court has overthrown enforced separation in public higher education on the ground of inequality but without consideration of the merits of the separate but equal rule have been the occasion for an outpouring of law review discussion on the subject. The present paper is a part of this stream. Its purpose is two-fold: first, to set forth the judicial history of the modern separate but equal rule, noting its pre-Fourteenth Amendment origin and the rather uncritical manner in which courts permitted it to infiltrate its way from one area of the law to another; and …

Constitutional Law-Fourteenth Amendment-Equal Protection Of The Laws-Racial Segregation In Public Educational Institutions, Neal Seegert S.Ed.

Michigan Law Review

Segregation of races, particularly separation of white and colored races, has long been condoned by American courts as permissible under the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. Underlying the traditional view is the idea that the equal protection clause is not violated by segregation so long as equal facilities are provided for both races. On this basic premise a large number of jurisdictions, particularly the southern states, have predicated constitutional provisions and statutory enactments compelling racial segregation, while a number of other states where segregation has not been forbidden by express constitutional or statutory provision have achieved …