Law Commons^™

School Funding Litigation: Who's Winning The War?, John Dayton, Anne Proffitt Dupre

Scholarly Works

This Article examines how the landscape of school funding litigation has changed over the three decades since Serrano and Rodriguez. The first part of the Article sets forth the history of school funding litigation since Serrano and Rodriguez and unravels the legal theories that have driven the school financing cases, explaining past dispositions and point out likely future trends. At first blush it would appear that the attorneys seeking social change through greater equity in school funding are litigating similar issues in each state. Yet judges have approached these matters from different directions with results that vary significantly from state …

Implementing Brown: A Lawyer’S View, Robert A. Sedler

Law Faculty Research 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 …

From Agency To Zattiero - The Effect Of School Board Policy, John E. Rumel

Articles

No abstract provided.

Lessons From And For "Disabled" Students, Sharon E. Rush

UF Law Faculty Publications

The traditional understanding of "disabled" means to have a physical, mental, or emotional limitation. It is unfortunate that the word has negative connotations because we all have the ability to do some things and not others. An individual's disabilities, traditional or otherwise, do not diminish the person or detract from the universal tenet that all people are inherently equal and entitled to be treated with dignity. Generally, it is unproductive to compare the circumstances of one group with another for the purpose of discerning which group has it better or worse. Struggles by different groups to achieve equality have different …

Reform Or Retrenchment: Single Sex Education And The Construction Of Race And Gender, Verna L. Williams

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

As parents, policymakers, and educators search for solutions to the crisis in the nation's public schools, single sex education emerges time and again as a promising strategy, particularly for African American students. This article argues that, in order to comprehend fully the implications of single sex schooling in inner city schools, examining the history of sex-based and race-based segregation in education is essential.

History demonstrates that sex and racial segregation in education has supported gender and hierarchies and the attendant subordination of African Americans and white women. For example, when public education became available for Blacks, its primary purpose was …

The Equal Access Act: Still Controversial After All These Years, Leora Harpaz

Faculty Scholarship

Over its twenty-year history, the Equal Access Act has continued to spark controversy. Despite a large number of court decisions that have interpreted the scope of the statute, those controversies have not yet subsided nor are they likely to for the foreseeable future. Interpretation of the Equal Access Act is complicated by ambiguities in the statute's language and the complex relationship that exists between the statute and the First Amendment's prohibition on religious establishments combined with its protection for freedom of expression. The delicate constitutional balancing act that the statute attempts to accomplish complicates the task of statutory interpretation in …

The Imperium Strikes Back: The Need To Teach Socioeconomics To Law Students., William K. Black

Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

The Equal Access Act: Still Controversial After All These Years, Leora Harpaz

Faculty Scholarship

Over its twenty-year history, the Equal Access Act has continued to spark controversy. Despite a large number of court decisions that have interpreted the scope of the statute, those controversies have not yet subsided nor are they likely to for the foreseeable future. Interpretation of the Equal Access Act is complicated by ambiguities in the statute's language and the complex relationship that exists between the statute and the First Amendment's prohibition on religious establishments combined with its protection for freedom of expression. The delicate constitutional balancing act that the statute attempts to accomplish complicates the task of statutory interpretation in …

Fun With Dick And Jane And Lawrence: A Primer On Education Privacy As Constitutional Liberty, Susan P. Stuart

Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Resisting Retreat: The Struggle For Equity In Educational Opportunity In The Post-Brown Era, Lia Epperson

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

The Power Behind The Promise: Enforcing No Child Left Behind To Improve Education, Amy M. Reichbach

Faculty Publications

Despite the U.S. Supreme Court's recognition in 1954, in Brown v. Board of Education, that education is of paramount importance, six million middle and high school students are still in danger of being left behind. Less than seventy-five percent of eighth graders, fifty percent in urban schools, are graduating from high school within five years. Advocates for educational equity have appealed to the courts, achieving limited success. They have also turned to the legislature, which most recently enacted the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 ("NCLB"). Thus far, however, the federal government has not enforced NCLB adequately. This …

Finding Success In The "Cauldron Of Competition:" The Effectiveness Of Academic Support Programs, Leslie Yalof Garfield

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This article provides an in-depth analysis of our comprehensive study of the Pace Academic Support Program. Section II of the article discusses the purpose and design of ASPs generally, and Pace Law School's program specifically. Section III describes the research design, methodology, and procedures used for this study. Section IV evaluates and analyzes the findings, with an in-depth analysis of the impact each service yields to ASP students, as well as the statistical significance of such benefits. Section V evaluates the importance of background criteria and the impact that such variables have on ASP participants and non-participants. Section V also …

Brown As Icon, Steven L. Winter

Law Faculty Research Publications

No abstract provided.

Brown At 50: Reconstructing Brown'S Promise, Taunya Lovell Banks

Faculty Scholarship

Today the measure of equal education for black children often is the racial composition of the school population rather than the quality of education received. Increasingly educational achievement for children of all races is tied to socioeconomic status. Since whites as a group are more affluent than non-whites, race and class tend to get conflated leaving uninformed people to conclude that racial integration alone is the measure of equal educational opportunities for black and other non-white children. Legal scholars writing about equal educational opportunities tend to focus either on ways to achieve racial integration or funding equality. Few scholars explore …

Interdisciplinary Teaching And Collaboration In Higher Education: A Concept Whose Time Has Come, Carol Harding, Anita Weinberg

Faculty Publications & Other Works

No abstract provided.

Brown V. Board Of Education Fifty Years Later: What Makes For Greatness In A Legal Opinion?, Neil G. Williams

Faculty Publications & Other Works

No abstract provided.

Are Single-Sex Schools Inherently Unequal?, Michael Heise

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Real Ethical Dilemma: Professor Whistleblower And The Diary Of The Lost Job*, Terence Garrett

Political Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

*This story is a fictionalized account of an actual event. Names have been changed to protect the innocent and the guilty. Any similarities with other persons or events are purely coincidental. A version of this paper was presented at a Roundtable discussion of the 2002 Midwest Political Science Association Annual Meeting, April 2002, in Chicago, IL, Roundtable Title – “Administrators, Activists, and Academics: Political Science at the Bargaining Table.” In no way, shape, or form is this essay about my current employer.

School Accountability And ‘High Stakes’ Testing, James G. Dwyer

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Training For Justice: The Global Reach Of Clinical Legal Education, Richard J. Wilson

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

The Supreme Court And Pledge Of Allegiance: Does God Still Have A Place In American Schools?, Charles J. Russo

Educational Leadership Faculty Publications

The dearth of statistical or anecdotal evidence aside, combined with the relative lack of reported litigation, it appears that most students and teachers regularly participate in perhaps the most common daily school ritual by joining in the patriotic recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance (Pledge) and the salute to the American Flag. Yet, as discussed throughout this article, this daily practice has had a history of controversy, whether in schools or political settings.

Turning specifically to schools, in Newdow v. United States Congress (Newdow), the Ninth Circuit set off a firestorm of controversy when, in a case from California, it …

A New Image In The Looking Glass: Faculty Mentoring, Invitational Rhetoric, And The Second-Class Status Of Women In U.S. Academia, Carlo A. Pedrioli

Faculty Scholarship

This article maintains that because Title VII alone does not have the ability to further the progress women have made in academic hiring, retention, and promotion, looking to remedies in addition to Title VII will be advantageous in helping to improve the status of women in U.S. academia. The article suggests as an additional remedy the implementation of faculty mentoring opportunities for junior female faculty members. A key way of initiating and furthering such mentoring opportunities is a type of discourse called invitational rhetoric, which is “an invitation to understanding as a means to create...relationship[s] rooted in equality, immanent value, …

The Racial Gap In Ability: From The Fifteenth Century To Grutter And Gratz, Kevin D. Brown

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Justice O'Connor’s opinion for the United States Supreme Court in Grutter v. Bollinger upheld the University of Michigan Law School’s affirmative action plan. Beneficiaries of affirmative action clearly meet the necessary qualifications for admissions to selective colleges, universities, and graduate programs. But, the justifications for affirmative action articulated by Justice O'Connor implicitly recognized that underrepresented minorities with a history of discrimination are not as academically qualified as their non-Hispanic white (and Asian counterparts). Their inclusion in affirmative action plans is based on the belief that they provide enough educational and non-educational benefits to offset their academic shortcomings.

There are measurable …

The Hypothetical Opinion In Grutter V. Bollinger From The Perspective Of The Road Not Taken In Brown V. Board Of Education, Kevin D. Brown

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

In Defense Of Deference, Luis Fuentes-Rohwer, Guy-Uriel E. Charles

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Comparing Remedies For School Desegregation And Employment Discrimination, Candace Kovacic-Fleischer

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

INTRODUCTION: Ten years after the Supreme Court decided Brown v. Board of Education, now a symbol of the beginning of the end of racial discrimination, Congress passed Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Title VII opened the workplace to all races and women in ways that had not previously existed. While discrimination in the workplace has not disappeared in the forty years since Title VII's enactment, one sees minorities and women in a greater variety of jobs, and at higher levels, than one would have seen a generation ago. The promise of Brown, however, has not been …

Abandoning Principles: Qualified Tuition Programs And Wealth Transfer Taxation Doctrine, Wayne M. Gazur

Publications

In 1996 Congress gave its imprimatur to a modest qualified tuition program provision. Over the course of the next five years the provision was expanded, providing additional wealth transfer taxation and income taxation benefits. This essay proposes that unless limited, such benefits are inconsistent with established taxation principles and also have the potential to undermine the integrity of the wealth transfer tax structure and the progressive nature of the income tax.

The Most Rational Branch: Guinn V. Legislature And The Judiciary's Role As Helpful Arbiter Of Conflict, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Scholarly Works

When the Nevada Supreme Court decided Guinn v. Legislature, one would have thought from reading the popular press accounts that the court had forcibly displaced the State legislature by means of a violent coup d'etat. Newspaper accounts of the decision referred to it as a usurpation of power in violation of clear constitutional language, belittling the court in language sometimes more appropriate to the baseball bleachers than to serious editorial commentary. Following suit, politicized elements of the citizenry began a recall effort (seemingly unsuccessful as of this writing) directed at the court as well as joining the chorus of criticisms. …

When Equality Leaves Everyone Worse Off: The Problem Of Leveling Down In Equality Law, Deborah Brake

Articles

This Article addresses the problem of leveling down as a response to discrimination. Existing case law and legal scholarship generally assume that inequality may be remedied in one of two ways: improving the lot of the disfavored group to match that of the most favored group, or worsening the treatment of the favored group until they fare as badly as everyone else. The term "leveling down" refers to the latter response. This Article contends that courts and commentators have overstated the flexibility of equality rights in accepting leveling down as a response to inequality, and proposes a new framework that …