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Death Or Transformation? Educational Autonomy In The Roberts Court, Elizabeth Dale
Death Or Transformation? Educational Autonomy In The Roberts Court, Elizabeth Dale
UF Law Faculty Publications
In the aftermath of the Supreme Court's decisions in Grutter and Gratz a number of commentators argued that the Court had begun to embrace a new constitutional doctrine that required deference to the decisions of some institutions. Most notably they asserted that the Court would defer within the field of education. But even as they suggested that the Court was more willing to explore the doctrine, those two opinions left several large questions unanswered: Did the Court's embrace of institutional autonomy extend beyond higher education, into the K-12 realm? If so, what were its bounds? Was the doctrine only relevant …
Institutional Academic Freedom Or Autonomy Grounded Upon The First Amendment: A Jurisprudential Mirage, Richard H. Hiers
Institutional Academic Freedom Or Autonomy Grounded Upon The First Amendment: A Jurisprudential Mirage, Richard H. Hiers
UF Law Faculty Publications
In recent decades, several federal judges and Supreme Court Justices have stated that, at some time or another in the past, the Court determined that public universities or their professional schools are entitled to institutional academic freedom (or institutional autonomy) under the First Amendment. Notwithstanding the views of many learned commentators, the Court has never so held. Concurring opinions and dicta do not constitute Constitutional law. This article traces the series of misattributions, misreadings and other errors that have contributed to the present peculiar state of confusion in regard to these matters.
Institutional Academic Freedom - A Constitutional Misconception: Did Grutter V. Bollinger Perpetuate The Confusion?, Richard H. Hiers
Institutional Academic Freedom - A Constitutional Misconception: Did Grutter V. Bollinger Perpetuate The Confusion?, Richard H. Hiers
UF Law Faculty Publications
This article begins with a review of language that eventually gave rise to the concept of institutional academic freedom, and includes a summary of lower court decisions embracing that concept or notion. The second part identifies certain constitutional problems in connection with the idea that institutional academic freedom can somehow be derived from or based upon the First Amendment. The third part describes and analyzes language in the Court's Grutter decision, language that may or may not have the effect of validating the concept of institutional academic freedom under the First Amendment.
New Restrictions On Academic Free Speech: Jeffries V. Harleston Ii, Richard H. Hiers
New Restrictions On Academic Free Speech: Jeffries V. Harleston Ii, Richard H. Hiers
UF Law Faculty Publications
Notwithstanding academic freedom's venerable and near-sacrosanct place among academicians in the United States today, the Supreme Court first accorded it constitutional status only in the 1950s. The Court did not recognize First Amendment speech rights of public employees generally until 1968. In subsequent years, the Court evolved two separate lines of cases: the one relating to, and generally protective of, academic freedom in public colleges and universities; the other, relating to the speech rights of public school teachers and public employees in other work contexts. The Supreme Court has yet to address the question whether the severely restrictive standards developed …