Law Commons^™

Investigating The Role Of Identity Documents In Refugees’ Access To Education In South Africa, Elvis Munyoka

Southern African Journal of Policy and Development

This article examined the role of identity documentation in refugees’ access to education in South Africa. Identity documentation has become a necessity in modern societies. Proof of identity is required to demonstrate who one is, and to gain access to various government services such as health care, employment, and 􀏐inancial assistance. However, the role of identity documents in refugees’ access to education in South Africa has received less attention. Few studies have demonstrated that without identity documents, refugees confront multiple barriers to accessing primary and secondary education in South Africa. This article reviewed available studies and recent literature on the …

On The Basis Of Sex(Ual Orientation Or Gender Identity): Bringing Queer Equity To School With Title Ix, Chan Tov Mcnamarah

Cornell Law Review

A transgender fourth-grader's teacher refuses to address her by her preferred name and gender. A lesbian high-school student's sexual education class does not teach her about topics relevant to her experience as a queer woman. A gay male college student's campus does not have LGBT-specific post-sexual assault care. Under aformal equality approach to Title IX, can any of these discriminations be remedied? Unfortunately not. And yet, recent victories for the LGBT community have been won on formal equality arguments-that LGBT persons should be treated the same as heterosexual, cisgender persons. In the shadow of marriage equality, the LGBT community has …

You Are Not Cordially Invited: How Universities Maintain First Amendment Rights And Safety In The Midst Of Controversial On-Campus Speakers, Alyson R. Hamby

Cornell Law Review

Against a backdrop of national political turmoil, universities have experienced volatile reactions from their student bodies and outsiders in protest of the inflammatory speakers that schools host on their campuses. This Note discusses the tension between First Amendment protections and tort liability in the context of higher education. Specifically, it focuses on the interplay between controversial, on-campus speakers and the violent protests that arise in reaction to them. While examining this interaction, this Note emphasizes the legal duties of academic institutions in facilitating these on-campus speakers while also protecting their students’ constitutional rights and safety. In examining these conflicts, the …

Preferencing Educational Choice: The Constitutional Limits, Derek W. Black

Cornell Law Review

Rapidly expanding charter and voucher programs are establishing a new education paradigm in which access to traditional public schools is no longer guaranteed. In some areas, charter and voucher programs are on a trajectory to phase out traditional public schools altogether. This Article argues that this trend and its effects violate the constitutional right to public education embedded in all fifty state constitutions.

Importantly, this Article departs from past constitutional arguments against charter and voucher programs. Past arguments have attempted to prohibit such programs entirely and have assumed, with little evidentiary support, that they endanger statewide education systems. Unsurprisingly, litigation …

From No Child Left Behind To Every Student Succeeds: Back To A Future For Education Federalism, Michael Heise

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

When passed in 2001, the No Child Left Behind Act represented the federal government’s most dramatic foray into the elementary and secondary public school policymaking terrain. While critics emphasized the Act’s overreliance on standardized testing and its reduced school district and state autonomy, proponents lauded the Act’s goal to close the achievement gap between middle- and upper-middle-class students and students historically ill served by their schools. Whatever structural changes the No Child Left Behind Act achieved, however, were largely undone in 2015 by the Every Student Succeeds Act, which repositioned significant federal education policy control in state governments. From a …

Education Rights And Wrongs: Publicly Funded Vouchers, State Constitutions, And Education Death Spirals, Michael Heise

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

A response to Julie F. Mead, The Right to an Education or the Right to Shop for Schooling: Examining Voucher Programs in Relation to State Constitutional Guarantees, 42 FORDHAM URB. L.J. 703 (2015).

Law And Policy Entrepreneurs: Empirical Evidence On The Expansion Of School Choice Policy, Michael Heise

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This study leverages event history analysis to help explain the expansion of public charter school legislation between 1991–2006. This study expands previous work in two important ways. First, while critical distinctions separate public charter school and school voucher programs, both fall comfortably within the broader rubric of “school choice.” As such, it is difficult to understand the development of state legislation for one school choice variant independent of the other. Thus, this analysis includes the presence of publicly- or privately-funded voucher programs in a state as a possible factor influencing the adoption of charter school legislation in a state. Second, …

Religion, School, And Judicial Decision Making: An Empirical Perspective, Michael Heise, Gregory C. Sisk

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

We analyze various influences on judicial outcomes favoring religion in cases involving elementary and secondary schools and decided by lower federal courts. A focus on religion in the school context is warranted as the most difficult and penetrating questions about the proper relationship between Church and State have arisen with special frequency, controversy, and fervor in the often-charged atmosphere of education. Schools and the Religion Clauses collide persistently, and litigation frames many of these collisions. Also, the frequency and magnitude of these legal collisions increase as various policy initiatives increasingly seek to leverage private and religious schools in the service …

Legal Education In China: English Language Materials, Roderick O'Brien

International Journal of Legal Information

Modern legal education began in China late in the Qing dynasty (1644-1911), and then expanded during the period of the Republic of China from 1912. With the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, legal education entered a new and difficult period. The compilation of English language materials offered here includes a few materials relating to the Qing and Republican periods, but after 1949 only materials relating to the People’s Republic of China (mainland China). Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan all have separate legal education systems and structures, and are excluded from this compilation.

Enhancing Enforcement Of Economic, Social, And Cultural Rights Using Indicators: A Focus On The Right To Education In The Icescr, Sital Kalantry, Jocelyn E. Getgen, Steven A. Koh

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Nearly fifteen years ago, Audrey Chapman emphasized the importance of ascertaining violations of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) as a means to enhance its enforcement. Today, this violations approach is even more salient given the recent adoption of the Optional Protocol to the ICESCR. This article focuses on the right to education in the ICESCR to illustrate how indicators can be employed to ascertain treaty compliance and violations. Indicators are important to enforcing economic, social, and cultural rights because they assist in measuring progressive realization. The methodology that we propose calls for: 1) analyzing the …

Affirmative Action In Higher Education Over The Next Twenty-Five Years: A Need For Study And Action, Sandra Day O'Connor, Stewart Schwab

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Enhancing Enforcement Of Economic, Social And Cultural Rights Using Indicators: A Focus On The Right To Education In The Icescr, Sital Kalantry, Joycelyn E. Getgen, Steven Arrigg Koh

Cornell Law Faculty Working Papers

Nearly fifteen years ago, Audrey R. Chapman emphasized the importance of ascertaining violations of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) as a means to enhance its enforcement. Today, the violations approach is even more salient given the recent adoption of the ICESCR’s Optional Protocol, a powerful tool to hold States parties accountable for violations.

Indicators are essential tools for assessing violations of economic, social and cultural rights (ESCRs) because they are often the best way to measure progressive realization. Proposed guidelines on using indicators give guidance on the content of States parties reports to treaty monitoring …

Measuring State Compliance With The Right To Education Using Indicators: A Case Study Of Colombia’S Obligations Under The Icescr, Sital Kalantry, Jocelyn Getgen, Steven A. Koh

Cornell Law Faculty Working Papers

The right to education is often referred to as a “multiplier right” because its enjoyment enhances other human rights. It is enumerated in several international instruments, but it is codified in greatest detail in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). Despite its importance, the right to education has received limited attention from scholars, practitioners, and international and regional human rights bodies as compared to other economic, social and cultural rights (ECSRs). In this Article, we propose a methodology that utilizes indicators to measure treaty compliance with the right to education. Indicators are essential to measuring compliance …

Cooperative Federalism Post-Schaffer: The Burden Of Proof And Preemption In Special Education, Lara Gelbwasser Freed

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Courting Trouble: Litigation, High-Stakes Testing, And Education Policy, Michael R. Heise

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

High-stakes testing policies did not emerge in an education policy vacuum. Part I of this Article includes a brief description of the major high-stakes tests and their policy rationales. Part II surveys recent litigation challenging one distinct genre of high-stakes testing-high school exit exams. Two cases illustrate courts' current posture toward legal challenges of exit exams. Part III reviews evidence of courts' increased sensitivity to the policy consequences attributable to court decisions that interfere with the implementation of exit exams. Part IV concludes and notes the important normative questions raised by judges' concerns with policy consequences flowing from their decisions.

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

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Story Of San Antonio Independent School Dist. V. Rodriguez: School Finance, Local Control, And Constitutional Limits, Michael Heise

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Part of the Education Law Stories, this book chapter tells the story behind San Antonio Independent School Dist. v. Rodriguez. Mindful of the challenges incident to the federal courts' effort to dismantle de jure and de facto school segregation, the Rodriguez decision evidences reluctance by some of the Justices to become ensnarled in an effort to dismantle school finance systems in way that would affect an overwhelming majority of the nation's public schools. By side-stepping such a confrontation, Rodriguez implicitly reveals important aspects about the federal courts and, in particular, how the Justices view their role in our federal system …

Litigated Learning, Law's Limits, And Urban School Reform Challenges, Michael Heise

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This Article assesses the likely efficacy of litigation efforts seeking to enhance equal educational opportunity by improving student academic achievement in the nation's urban public schools. Past education reform litigation efforts focusing on school desegregation and finance met with mixed success. Current litigation efforts seeking to improve student academic achievement promise to be even less successful because student academic achievement involves variables and activities located further from the reach of litigation than such variables as a school's racial composition and per pupil spending levels. Moreover, efforts to improve student achievement in the nation's urban public schools--especially high poverty schools--face additional …

The 2006 Winthrop And Frances Lane Lecture: The Unintended Legal And Policy Consequences Of The No Child Left Behind Act, Michael Heise

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Social Reproduction And Religious Reproduction: A Democratic-Communitarian Analysis Of The Yoder Problem, Josh Chafetz

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

In 1972, Wisconsin v. Yoder presented the Supreme Court with a sharp clash between the state's interest in social reproduction through education -- that is, society's interest in using the educational system to perpetuate its collective way of life among the next generation -- and the parents' interest in religious reproduction -- that is, their interest in passing their religious beliefs on to their children. This Article will take up the challenge of that clash, a clash which continues to be central to current debates over issues like intelligent design in the classroom. This Article engages with the competing theories …

No Lawsuit Left Behind, Michael Heise

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Political Economy Of Education Federalism, Michael Heise

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The No Child Left Behind Act represents the federal government's most significant foray into the nation's elementary and secondary public school policymaking terrain. Although the Act undertakes unassailable policy goals, its critics argue that it represents an unwarranted federal intrusion into education policymaking, generates unintended policy consequences, and amounts to an unfunded federal mandate. Constitutionalists dwell on the Act's threat to structural federalism as it plausibly strains Congress's conditional spending authority. The coercive force that federal education funds exert on local school districts and states attracts particular attention. The No Child Left Behind Act, however, safely navigates through an even …

Separate But Equal And Single-Sex Schools , Gary J. Simson

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Spurred on by published reports about gender bias in the schools, public single-sex schools, which had almost disappeared from the scene in the U.S. fifteen years ago, began to make a comeback in the early 1990s. In addition, in the past few years, the Bush Administration has taken measures to add momentum to this development. Does the principle that separate is inherently unequal, which the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education laid down in the context of public schools separated by race, also apply to public schools separated by sex?

Part I of this Article examines the constitutionality …

Brown V. Board Of Education, Footnote 11, And Multidisciplinarity, Michael Heise

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Litigated Learning And The Limits Of Law, Michael R. Heise

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Brown’s legacy and what it says about the efficacy of litigation as a vehicle to achieve social change mean different things to different people. Although popular mythology emphasizes Brown’s critical role in securing equal educational opportunity, careful reflection reveals that the decision’s legacy is anything but clear. A narrow focus on school desegregation suggests Brown’s legacy is aptly characterized as one of unfulfilled promise. A broader focus that extends to include subsequent equal educational opportunity activity such as the school finance litigation movement, however, casts positive light on Brown’s legacy. More important than completing interpretations of Brown’s legacy is what …

Are Single-Sex Schools Inherently Unequal?, Michael Heise

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Grutter V. Bollinger/Gratz V. Bollinger: View From A Limestone Ledge, Gerald Torres

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Educational Jujitsu: How School Finance Lawyers Learned To Turn Standards And Accountability Into Dollars, Michael Heise

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Equal Educational Opportunity By The Numbers: The Warren Court's Empirical Legacy, Michael Heise

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

By drawing upon empirical social science evidence to inform a core tenet of the Court's understanding of equal education the Warren Court established one of its enduring - if under-appreciated - legacies: The increased empiricization of the equal educational opportunity doctrine. All three major subsequent legal efforts to restructure public schools and equalize educational opportunities among students - post-Brown school desegregation, finance, and choice litigation - evidence an increasingly empiricized equal educational opportunity doctrine. If my central claim is correct, it becomes important to consider the consequences of this development. I consider two in this Article and find both benefits …

The Courts, Educational Policy, And Unintended Consequences, Michael Heise

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Recent school finance litigation illustrates yet again how law can generate unintended policy consequences. Seeking to improve student achievement and school accountability, more states now turn to educational standards and assessments. At the same time, a multi-decade school finance litigation effort develops and changes its theoretical base. Recently, educational standards and school finance litigation converged in a way that enables school districts to gain financially from their inability to meet desired achievement levels. Specifically, courts increasingly allow litigants and lawsuits to transform standards and assessments into constitutional entitlements to additional resources. As a consequence, increased legal and financial exposure for …