Law Commons^™

Increasing Diversity By A New Master's Degree In Legal Principles, Joni Hersch

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Students who leave their JD program before graduation leave empty handed, without an additional degree or other credential indicating that their law school studies had any professional, educational, or marketable value. The absence of such a credential combines with the substantial risks and costs associated with law school education to discourage risk averse students from applying. The adverse impacts of these risks may be especially great for lower income students who have fewer financial resources to draw on and less information about their fit with legal education and the legal profession. I propose that law schools award a master’s degree …

Positive Education Federalism: The Promise Of Equality After The Every Student Succeeds Act, Christian Sundquist

Articles

This Article examines the nature of the federal role in public education following the recent passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act in December 2015 (“ESSA”). Public education was largely unregulated for much of our Nation’s history, with the federal government deferring to states’ traditional “police powers” despite the de jure entrenchment of racial and class-based inequalities. A nascent policy of education federalism finally took root following the Brown v. Board decision and the enactment of the Elementary and Secondary School Act (“ESEA”) with the explicit purpose of eradicating such educational inequality.

This timely Article argues that current federal education …