Education Law Commons^™

Fisher V. Texas: The Limits Of Exhaustion And The Future Of Race-Conscious University Admissions, John A. Powell, Stephen Menendian

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Article investigates the potential ramifications of Fisher v. Texas and the future of race-conscious university admissions. Although one cannot predict the ultimate significance of the Fisher decision, its brief and pregnant statements of law portends an increasingly perilous course for traditional affirmative action programs. Part I explores the opinions filed in Fisher, with a particular emphasis on Justice Kennedy’s opinion on behalf of the Court. We focus on the ways in which the Fisher decision departs from precedent, proscribes new limits on the use of race in university admissions, and tightens requirements for narrow tailoring. Part II investigates the …

Thinking Hard About 'Race-Neutral' Admissions, Richard H. Sander, Aaron Danielson

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Our exploration is organized as follows. In Part I, we sympathetically consider the very difficult dilemmas facing higher education leaders. Understanding the often irreconcilable pressures that constrain university administrators is essential if we are to envision the plausible policies they might undertake. In Part II, we draw on a range of data to illustrate some of the “properties” of admissions systems and, in particular, the ways in which race, SES, and academic preparation interact dynamically both within individual schools and across the educational spectrum. Partly because the questions we examine here have been so little studied, ideal data does not …

The 'Compelling Government Interest' In School Diversity: Rebuilding The Case For An Affirmative Government Role, Philip Tegeler

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

How far does Justice Kennedy’s “moral and ethical obligation” to avoid racial isolation extend? Does the obligation flow primarily from Supreme Court case law, does it derive from an evolving consensus in the social sciences, or does it also have a statutory basis in Title VI and other federal law? In addition to its value as a justification for non-individualized, race-conscious remedial efforts by state and local governments, does the compelling interest identified in Parents Involved also suggest an affirmative duty on the part of the federal government? And if so, how far does this affirmative duty extend, and how …

Update: The Supreme Court And Affirmative Action, Charles J. Russo

Educational Leadership Faculty Publications

Few issues in education have generated more ongoing controversy during the last half-century than affirmative action. Supporters view it as a positive step to eliminate the effects of past discrimination. Conversely, critics speak of race-conscious policies that they maintain create greater problems by failing to address how granting preferences today remedies past inequities.

Although typically more contentious in higher education, affirmative action is the centerpiece of this column because of the impact that race-conscious policies can have on K–12 schools.

A Thought Experiment: Brown V. Board Of Education Of Topeka, Kansas, Louis Michael Seidman

The Modern American

No abstract provided.

The Real Issue Behind Stanford V. Roche: Faulty Conceptions Of University Assignment Policies Stemming From The 1947 Biddle Report, Sean M. O'Connor

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

The recent Supreme Court decision in Stanford v. Roche laid bare a faulty assumption of the federal research funding system. Government patent policy for federally funded research relies on "contractors"--the recipients of federal funding--to secure patent assignments from their employees. While this practice was routine for private firms and nonprofit research institutions, it was not for universities. This was in part based on the relationship of faculty and other researchers to universities that differed from industry employment relationships. The roots of this faulty assumption can be traced to the seminal 1947 Biddle Report. Detailed monographs drafted as appendices to the …

Affirmative Action, Justice Kennedy, And The Virtues Of The Middle Ground, Allen K. Rostron

Faculty Works

When the Supreme Court hears arguments this fall about the constitutionality of affirmative action policies at the University of Texas, attention will be focused once again on Justice Anthony Kennedy. With the rest of the Court split between a bloc of four reliably liberal jurists and an equally solid cadre of four conservatives, the spotlight regularly falls on Kennedy, the swing voter that each side in every closely divided and ideologically charged case desperately hopes to attract. Critics condemn Kennedy for having an unprincipled, capricious, and self-aggrandizing style of decision-making. Though he is often decisive in the sense of casting …

Considering Class: College Access And Diversity, Matthew N. Gaertner, Melissa Hart

Publications

Each time that the continued legality of race-conscious affirmative action is threatened, colleges and universities must confront the possibility of dramatically changing their admissions policies. Fisher v. University of Texas, which the Supreme Court will hear this year, presents just such a moment. In previous years when affirmative action has been outlawed by ballot initiative in specific states or when the Court has seemed poised to reject it entirely, there have been calls for replacing race-conscious admissions with class-based affirmative action. Supporters of race-conscious affirmative action have typically criticized the class-based alternative as ineffective at maintaining racial diversity. This …

Grutter's Denouement: Three Templates From The Roberts Court, Ellen D. Katz

Articles

Precedent from the Roberts Court shows the Justices taking three distinct approaches to precedent they dislike. Each provides a template for the Court to criticize race-based affirmative action in higher education, as Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin is widely expected to do. Most narrowly, the Court might use Fisher to issue a warning, much like it did in 2009 when it sidestepped a constitutional challenge to the Voting Rights Act; under this approach, the opinion would spell out why the Justices think the diversity celebrated in Grutter v. Bollinger no longer provides sufficient justification for the use of …

Context And Trivia, Samuel Brenner

Michigan Law Review

My academic mantra, writes Professor James C. Foster in the Introduction to BONG HiTS 4 JESUS: A Perfect Constitutional Storm in Alaska's Capital, which examines the history and development of the Supreme Court's decision in Morse v. Frederick, "[is] context, context, context" (p. 2). Foster, a political scientist at Oregon State University, argues that it is necessary to approach constitutional law "by situating the U.S. Supreme Court's ... doctrinal work within surrounding historical context, shorn of which doctrine is reduced to arid legal rules lacking meaning and significance" (p. 1). He seeks to do so in BONG HiTS 4 JESUS …

The First Amendment, Public School Students, And The Need For Clear Limits On School Officials' Authority Over Off-Campus Student Speech, Rory A. Weeks

Georgia Law Review

When, if ever, can school officials punish a student's off-
campus speech? The Supreme Court's student-speech
jurisprudence does not provide a clear answer. But this
much is clear: School officials do not possess absolute
authority over students' on-campus speech. Public school
students do not shed their First Amendment rights at the
schoolhouse gate. And yet during school or school-related
activities, public school students do not have coequal First
Amendment rights with adults in other contexts. During
school or school-related activities, school officials may
proscribe otherwise-permitted speech in order to fulfill the
school's basic educational mission, which includes
instructingstudents in civility. …

The Promise Of Grutter: Diverse Interactions At The University Of Michigan Law School, Meera E. Deo

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

In Grutter v. Bollinger, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld affirmative action at the University of Michigan Law School on the grounds of educational diversity. Yet the Court's assumption that admitting diverse students into law school would result in improved race relations, livelier classroom conversations, and better professional outcomes for students has never been empirically tested. This Article relies on survey and focus group data collected at the University of Michigan Lav School campus itself in March 2010 to examine not only whether, but how diversity affects learning. The data indicate both that there are sufficient numbers of students of color …

The Overhyped Path From Tinker To Morse: How The Student Speech Cases Show The Limits Of Supreme Court Decisions--For The Law And For The Litigants, Scott A. Moss

Publications

Each of the Supreme Court's high school student speech cases reflected the social angst of its era. In 1965's Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, three Iowa teens broke school rules to wear armbands protesting the Vietnam War. In 1983, amidst parental and political upset about youth exposure to sexuality in the media, Bethel School District No. 403 v. Fraser and Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier allowed the censorship of an innuendo-filled student government speech and a school newspaper article on teen pregnancy and parental divorce. In 2007, Morse v. Frederick paralleled the rise of reality television …

The Common School Before And After Brown: Democracy, Equality, And The Productivity Agenda, Rosemary C. Salomone

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

In recent years, economic forces of global magnitude have placed the substance and value of education in the national spotlight. With jobs for college graduates in short supply, political pundits and news commentators have placed different estimates on the worth of a college degree and the continued utility of the liberal arts. Economists tie specific educational factors to future income. A high school diploma, we are told, can translate into an additional $300,000 in lifetime salary. A highly effective kindergarten teacher likewise carries a value-added benefit of $320,000, the additional income that a classroom of today’s students may earn …

Taking Stock Of Student Rights Forty Years After Tinker, Stephen Wermiel

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

Really Leaving No Child Behind: How The Supreme Court's Student Speech Doctrine Compromises Modern Education Reform - And How It Can Use The In Loco Parentis Doctrine To Change It, Scott J. Street

Richmond Public Interest Law Review

tudent speech" doctrine defined by Tinker in favor of an in loco parentis standard that defers to the expertise of school officials in maintaining a safe, effective, and orderly school environment. Contrary to what its critics assume, an in loco parentis standard would not give school officials carte blanche to violate their students' rights. It would, for example, prohibit school officials from discriminating against students on the basis of viewpoint. But as long as Tinker's student speech doctrine survives, efforts to improve our schools and prepare our children for the rigors of the twenty-first century will suffer. The in loco …

The "Scope Of A Student": How To Analyze Student Speech In The Age Of The Internet, Erin Reeves

Georgia Law Review

In three seminal cases dating from 1969-1988, the U.S. Supreme Court determined that students have a more limited right to free speech while within the confines of a public school building. In recent years, however, more and more cases have arisenin which it is not so clear whether a student speaker is "on-campus,"due in large part to the rapid increase in speech communicated over the Internet. This Note explores the possibility of how far the "confines of a public school building" should be extended in this age of the Internet. After analyzing the current confusion regarding what amount of restriction …

Really Leaving No Child Behind: How The Supreme Court's Student Speech Doctrine Compromises Modern Education Reform - And How It Can Use The In Loco Parentis Doctrine To Change It, Scott J. Street

Richmond Journal of Law and the Public Interest

tudent speech" doctrine defined by Tinker in favor of an in loco parentis standard that defers to the expertise of school officials in maintaining a safe, effective, and orderly school environment. Contrary to what its critics assume, an in loco parentis standard would not give school officials carte blanche to violate their students' rights. It would, for example, prohibit school officials from discriminating against students on the basis of viewpoint. But as long as Tinker's student speech doctrine survives, efforts to improve our schools and prepare our children for the rigors of the twenty-first century will suffer. The in loco …

(Still) Constitutional School De-Segregation Strategies: Teaching Racial Literacy To Secondary School Students And Preferencing Racially-Literate Applicants To Higher Education, Michael J. Kaufman

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

In Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School Dist. No. 1, the Supreme Court declared that it will continue to scrutinize race-conscious educational decisions to insure that they are narrowly-tailored to serve a compelling governmental interest. This Article develops a strategy for enhancing racial diversity at all levels of American public education that can survive that rigorous constitutional scrutiny. The Article shows that school districts may prove that assigning a meaningful number of racially diverse students to their secondary schools is narrowly-tailored to achieve their compelling educational interest in teaching racial literacy. The constitutionality of this race-conscious educational …

Breaking Free Of Chevron's Constraints: Zuni Public School District No. 89 V. U.S. Department Of Education, Osamudia R. James

Articles

No abstract provided.

Race-Conscious Student Assignment Plans: Balkanization, Integration, And Individualized Consideration, Neil S. Siegel

Faculty Scholarship

In deciding Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education and Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1, the Supreme Court of the United States will likely confront a critical issue to emerge from the lower court opinions on voluntary integration plans: whether school districts that use race as a factor in student assignment must comply with a legal requirement of individualized consideration. The Court has imposed such a requirement in other contexts, but it has not clearly explained what the concept of individualized consideration means and why particular forms of it matter.

This Article clarifies the …

The Right To Say No To Discrimination: A Commentary On Rumsfeld V. Fair, Zachary Wolfe

The Modern American

No abstract provided.

Post-Admissions Educational Programming In A Post-Grutter World: A Response To Professor Brown, Evan H. Caminker

Articles

When asked to provide commentary on another scholar's reflections on Grutterl and Gratz and affirmative action, I am usually struck by two fears. First, because so much ink has been spilled on this topic, I worry the main presenter will have nothing new and interesting to say. Today this worry has been put to rest; I am so pleased that Professor Dorothy Brown offers a number of novel and intriguing observations and, in the end, advances a novel and intriguing proposal about the role Critical Race Theory ought to play in our nation's law school classrooms. Second, for the same …

Academic Freedom: Disciplinary Lessons From Hogwarts, Emily M. Calhoun

Publications

No abstract provided.

Foreword, Richard B. Collins

Publications

No abstract provided.

Jackson V. Birmingham Board Of Education: Title Ix's Implied Private Right Of Action For Retaliation, Elizabeth Mccuskey

Faculty Scholarship

The Supreme Court has penned countless words about the sound of statutory silence.' On March 29, 2005, the Court once again grappled with the meaning of silence in a statute, splitting along familiar 5-4 lines in Jackson v. Birmingham Board of Education.² When the dust cleared, a male coach of a high school girls' basketball team, who was fired in retaliation for protecting his players' Title IX³ rights, possessed a private right of action arising from the statute itself.⁴ Although the Court has retreated from its high-water mark of implying private rights of action,⁵ in …

The Free Exercise Of Religion And Public Schools: The Implications Of Hybrid Rights On The Religious Upbringing Of Children, Michael E. Lechliter

Michigan Law Review

This Note argues that parents have a fundamental right under the U.S. Constitution to direct the religious upbringing of their children and that courts interpreting Smith have systematically misunderstood and misapplied the Supreme Court's confusing hybrid rights language. Part I explains how Yoder and Smith create and preserve parents' right to direct the religious upbringing of their children. The essential point is that the free exercise right and the parental right are not examined independently and simply added together, but instead are incorporated together to provide a specific bite to the free exercise claim. Part I also examines the lower …

To Whom It May Concern: Re: Brown Iii, Angela Mae Kupenda

North Carolina Central Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Little Rock School Desegregation Cases In Richard Arnold's Court, Polly J. Price

Faculty Articles

This article proceeds as follows. Because it is first necessary to recount some of the history of the Little Rock school cases, Part I discusses the origins and early steps in the long-running litigation. Part II considers the period from 1982 until 2004 when Richard Arnold was a member of the appellate panel assigned to the school cases. This part identifies three critical points of the Eighth Circuit's intervention under Judge Arnold's leadership. In Part III, I suggest how Arnold's motivations for his decisions in the Little Rock school cases related to both his particular view of the limitations of …

The Unintended Lessons In Brown V. Board Of Education, Derrick A. Bell Jr.

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.