Law Commons^™

Silent Today, Conversant Tomorrow: Education Adequacy As A Political Question, Yeju Hwang

Northwestern University Law Review

When the Supreme Court declined to recognize the right to education as one fundamental to liberty, and thus unprotected by the U.S. Constitution, state courts took on the mantle as the next best fora for those yearning for judicial review of inequities present in American public schools. The explicit inclusion of the right to education in each state’s constitution carried the torch of optimism into the late twentieth century. Despite half a century of litigation in the states, the condition of the nation’s public school system remains troubling and perhaps increasingly falls short of expectations. Less competitive on an international …

Learning Law In Elementary And High School: Innovating Civics Education For A More Empowered Citizenry, Ariel Liberman, Michael Broyde

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

A principal objective of the public school system in a democracy is to promote societal cohesion by way of preparing students for civic engagement. There exists a founding belief that a democratic nation ought to be composed of educated activists, run by innovators, and kept in check by involved citizens. For, indisputably, the democratic experiment—our values, our institutions—can only be upheld anew with each generation on the backs of critique, reinvention, and reinvigoration. But, as so many have mentioned when discussing the civics education paradigm, the increase in educational opportunities and the marked expansion of our school system has not …

Obey Or Abey: An Empirical Examination Of Abeyance Agreements In Public School Discipline, Rachael K. Cox

Northwestern University Law Review

“Exclusionary discipline” is widely understood to mean the typical responses to student misbehavior in public schools: suspension and expulsion. But sometimes their lesser-known counterpart, the abeyance agreement, swoops in before the suspension or expulsion is effectuated and gives the student a “second chance” to avoid such exclusionary discipline—provided the student complies with the terms of the agreement. It sounds simple, but the reality is far more complicated. Without a clearly defined, regulated, and tracked practice, abeyance agreements are an off-record discipline device used at the sole discretion of public school district administrators. Joining a landscape of urgent concerns over the …

Family | Home | School, Latoya Baldwin Clark

Northwestern University Law Review

The state grants residents who live within a school district’s border an ownership interest in that district’s schools. This interest includes the power to exclude nonresidents. To attend school in a school district, a child must prove that she lives at an in-district address and is a bona fide resident. But in highly-sought-after districts and schools, establishing a child’s bona fide residence may be highly contested.

In this Essay, I show that education law, policies, and practices fail to recognize a child’s residence when the child’s family and living situation do not comport with a particular ideal of family life. …

Freedom, Democracy, And The Right To Education, Derek W. Black

Northwestern University Law Review

While litigation continues in an effort to establish a fundamental right to education under the U.S. Constitution, the full historical justification for this right remains missing—a fatal flaw for many jurists. This Article fills that gap, demonstrating that the central, yet entirely overlooked, justification for a federal right to education resides in America’s education story during the era of slavery and Reconstruction.

At that time, education was first and foremost about freedom. The South had criminalized education to maintain a racialized hierarchy that preserved slavery. Many African-Americans, seeing education as the means to both mental and physical freedom, made extraordinary …

Title Ix Administers A Booster Shot: The Effect Of Private Donations On Title Ix, Charlotte Franklin

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 (Title IX) prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in federally funded education programs or activities. Since its enactment, Title IX has dramatically increased interscholastic and intercollegiate athletic opportunities for women and girls. Despite indisputable progress since Title IX’s enactment, particularly for female athletes, many high schools and universities still fail to offer equal athletic opportunities for members of both sexes. Inadequate educational resources for high school and university athletic department administrators leads to a misunderstanding of Title IX’s requirements. This misunderstanding results in institutional misconduct and non-compliance with Title IX. In …

Legal Clinics And The Better Trained Lawyer, Part Ii: A Case Study Of Accomplishments, Challenges And The Future Of Clinical Legal Education, Thomas Geraghty

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

No abstract provided.

The Pursuit Of Comprehensive Education Funding Reform Via Litigation, Lisa Scruggs

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

No abstract provided.

Panel Discussion: The Right To Education: With Liberty, Justice, And Education For All?

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

No abstract provided.

A Class Action Lawsuit For The Right To A Minimum Education In Detroit, Carter G. Phillips

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

No abstract provided.

Preschool For All: Plyler V. Doe In The Context Of Early Childhood Education, Shiva Kooragayala

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

In its 1982 opinion in Plyler v. Doe, the Supreme Court held that a state could not deny undocumented children living within its borders a public and free K-12 education. This Note argues that Plyler’s protections extend to publicly-funded early childhood education programs that serve children between the ages of three and five. Due to the broad support of researchers, educators, and the general public, early childhood education programs funded by local, state, and the federal governments have become an integral part of a comprehensive public education today. While these early childhood education programs are nominally open to all students …

Litigating Trauma As Disability In American Schools, Taylor N. Mullaney

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

No abstract provided.

The Right To Education: An Analysis Through The Lens Of The Deontological Method Of Immanuel Kant, Kavana Ramaswamy

Northwestern Journal of Human Rights

The framework of categorical imperatives is one of the most famous deontological theories of rights that have been formulated. The framework has often been used to justify human rights policies all over the world. While they have been subject to several criticisms over the last two centuries, some of these include improvements to the original framework. This paper analyses the framework of the categorical imperatives and suggest certain modifications to improve internal coherence.

The paper then seeks to apply this framework to the right to education, a right that is under fire in the conservatively-charged political arena today. This is …

School Desegregation 2.0: What Is Required To Finally Integrate America's Public Schools, Jim Hilbert

Northwestern Journal of Human Rights

No abstract provided.

An American Oddity: The Law, History, And Toll Of The School District, Nadav Shoked

Northwestern University Law Review

The school district is a staple of American law. As the local government tasked with controlling our public schools, the school district is so well-entrenched that lawmakers and commentators ignore its uniqueness as a legal institution. The school district is peculiar to American law, and it is a peculiarity within American law. General purpose governments—cities and counties—are the local governments controlling schools outside the United States. In the United States itself, these governments control almost all other major local functions. But they do not control education here. Why? Why does American law rely on a separate local government for the …

Reforming School Discipline, Derek W. Black

Northwestern University Law Review

Public schools suspend millions of students each year, but less than ten percent of suspensions are for serious misbehavior. School leaders argue that these suspensions ensure an orderly educational environment for those students who remain. Social science demonstrates the opposite. The practice of regularly suspending students negatively affects misbehaving students as well as innocent bystanders. All things being equal, schools that manage student behavior through means other than suspension produce the highest achieving students. In this respect, the quality of education a school provides is closely connected to its discipline policies.

Reformers have largely overlooked the connection between discipline and …

May It Please The Court: Questions About Policy At Oral Argument, Cynthia K. Conlon, Julie M. Karaba

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

This Article examines the questions that Supreme Court Justices ask during oral argument. The authors content-coded questions asked in fifty-three cases argued during the October 2009, 2010, and 2011 terms—a total of 5,115 questions. They found that the Justices vary significantly in the extent to which they ask about different aspects of a case, including threshold issues, precedent, facts, external actors, legal argument, and policy. They also found that the Justices were more likely to ask policy-oriented questions in education cases than in constitutional cases that did not arise in a school setting. The authors included a case study of …

Van Duyn V. Baker School District: A "Material" Improvement In Evaluating A School District's Failure To Implement Individualized Education Programs, David G. King

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

This Case Note of explores the standards courts use when evaluating a school district's failure to implement a student's Individualized Education Plan (IEP). In , the Ninth Circuit held that only "material" failures to implement constitute a deprivation of Free Appropriate Public Education (FAPE) under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). The Note first begins with a discussion of the right to FAPE under the IDEA and how the Supreme Court narrowed the scope of FAPE in . It then examines the many different standards federal courts have used to evaluate implementation failures, including requiring the failure to involve …

Challenging Disparities In Special Education: Moving Parents From Disempowered Team Members To Ardent Advocates, Margaret M. Wakelin

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

No abstract provided.

Silicon Ceilings: Information Technology Equity, The Digital Divide And The Gender Gap Among Information Technology Professionals, Andrea M. Matwyshyn

Northwestern Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.