Education Law Commons^™

Zero Tolerance Policies: Criminalizing Childhood And Disenfranchising The Next Generation Of Citizens, S. David Mitchell

Faculty Publications

A juvenile adjudication of guilt has far more drastic consequences than existed just ten years ago ... Some of these consequences may not be apparent for a number of years, but their possibility should be anticipated, fully considered, and planned for, wherever possible. Under zero tolerance, students are suspended, expelled, or referred to juvenile authorities or some combination thereof for specified offenses. Zero tolerance policies punish students harshly regardless of the severity of the infraction, the existence of mitigating circumstances, or the context in which the conduct occurred. Part II discusses the origin and evolution of zero tolerance policies, as …

Where Schools Close In Chicago, Randall K. Johnson

Faculty Works

It is often assumed that schools close, disproportionately, in disadvantaged parts of Chicago. The assumption, however, has yet to be substantiated by research. As a result, this article tests the assumption in order to explain where schools close in Chicago. It does so by introducing a new Chicago Public School (CPS) closings dataset. The dataset sheds some light on the phenomenon by identifying 130 schools that closed, twenty-seven ZIP codes that experienced CPS closings and three demographic characteristics of these ZIP codes. In the process, this dataset helps to explain how CPS closings relate to race, income and location.

School Surveillance And The Fourth Amendment, Jason P. Nance

UF Law Faculty Publications

In the aftermath of several highly-publicized incidents of school violence, public school officials have increasingly turned to intense surveillance methods to promote school safety. The current jurisprudence interpreting the Fourth Amendment generally permits school officials to employ a variety of strict measures, separately or in conjunction, even when their use creates a prison-like environment for students. Yet, not all schools rely on such strict measures. Recent empirical evidence suggests that low-income and minority students are much more likely to experience intense security conditions in their school than other students, even after taking into account factors such as neighborhood crime, school …

Tenure, The Aberrant Consumer Contract, James J. White

Articles

This symposium concerns asymmetric contracts, usually contracts where one party has great power and the other has little. The papers deal generally with contracts between consumers who get a “take it or leave it” offer and corporations such as Hertz, Microsoft, Verizon, and General Motors who draft the contracts according to their wishes. In almost all of these asymmetric contracts the stronger (corporations) writes the terms and presents them to the weaker (consumers) for signing without negotiation. Indeed the corporate agent with whom the consumer deals (e.g., the person at the Hertz desk) has no authority to change the contract …

Will The Income-Based Repayment Program Enable Law Schools To Continue To Provide Harvard-Style Legal Education, Gregory S. Crespi

SMU Law Review

Legal education provided in the prevailing “Harvard-style” now costs students on average between $160,000 and $250,000 for their three years of study, the precise amount depending on the law school attended, the alternative employment opportunities foregone, and the amount of scholarship assistance provided. However, the median starting salary for full-time, entry-level legal positions has declined in recent years to only $60,000/year, and upwards of 45% of recent law graduates are now unable to obtain full-time legal employment within 9 months of their graduation, and this dismal employment situation is unlikely to significantly improve over the next few years. While the …

It Takes A Federalist Village: A Revitalized Property Tax As The Linchpin For Stable, Effective K-12 Public Education Funding, Mildred Wigfall Robinson

Richmond Public Interest Law Review

Public education in the United States is a big business. In the fall of 2011, more than 55.5 million students from kindergarten through 12th grade were expected to enroll in the nation's public schools at a total cost of $599,145,678,000. Though it is a service provided by local governments, its cost is borne by local, state, and, to a more limited extent, federal taxpayers. Providing public education is a massive undertaking and no one level of government can solely bear its cost. Governmental revenue sources, from which allocated shares of expense are presently borne, differ. Local funding is provided predominately …

Still Unconstitutional: Our Nation's Experiment With State-Sponsored Sex Segregation In Education, David S. Cohen, Nancy Levit

Faculty Works

Since federal regulations authorized single-sex education in 2006, there has been an explosion of single-sex schools and classes. Although the Supreme Court has not ruled, three federal court decisions have addressed the constitutionality of single-sex classes, and the issue will percolate toward Supreme Court review soon. The arguments are that parents should have choices and “diversity” of educational options, that “brain research” shows that boys and girls are so biologically different to need sex-specific educational environments, that educational outcomes are better, and single-sex learning environments allows boys and girls to break through gender stereotypes. This article dissects these arguments within …

Individual Academic Freedom: An Ordinary Concern Of The First Amendment, Scott R. Bauries

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Our Nation is deeply committed to safeguarding academic freedom, which is of transcendent value to all of us, and not merely to the teachers concerned. That freedom is therefore a special concern of the First Amendment, which does not tolerate laws that cast a pall of orthodoxy over the classroom.

There is some argument that expression related to academic scholarship or classroom instruction implicates additional constitutional interests that are not fully accounted for by this Court's customary employee-speech jurisprudence. We need not, and for that reason do not, decide whether the analysis we conduct today would apply in the same …

School Shootings And The Legislative Push To Arm Teachers, Allen K. Rostron

Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Table Of Contents

The Journal of Law and Education

No abstract provided.

Tax Credit School Scholarship Plans, Stephen D. Sugarman

The Journal of Law and Education

No abstract provided.

The Secret Of Being Gay And Still Being Happy, Perry A. Zirkel

The Journal of Law and Education

No abstract provided.

Customizable Sexual Orientation Privacy For Minor Schoolchildren: A Law School Invention In Search Of A Constitutional Mandate, Christopher A. Ferrara

The Journal of Law and Education

No abstract provided.

Recent Cases

The Journal of Law and Education

No abstract provided.

Commentary - Elementary And Secondary Education

The Journal of Law and Education

No abstract provided.

Coaches Corner - Elementary And Secondary Education

The Journal of Law and Education

No abstract provided.

Maintaining The Schoolhouse Gate: Why Public Universities Should Not Regulate Online, Off Campus Communications Through Student Handbooks, Hallye Bankson

The Journal of Law and Education

No abstract provided.

Don't Say Gay Bills And The Movement To Keep Discussion Of Lgbt Issues Out Of Schools, Paige Hamby Barbeauld

The Journal of Law and Education

No abstract provided.

The Paradox Of Race-Conscious Labels, Leslie Y. Garfield

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Labeling affirmative action laws with integrity is a hopelessly paradoxical pursuit. This article illustrates the consequences of such a pursuit. Section I traces the origins of the Top Ten Percent Law, which arose as a legislative protest to the Fifth Circuit's rejection of the use of race in admissions decisions. This section provides an in-depth understanding of the Top Ten Percent Law and concludes with a detailed analysis of the Fisher decision. Section II supplies an explanation of the majority's conclusion to treat the Top Ten Percent Law as race-neutral and provides detailed support for Justice Ginsburg's affirmation that the …

The Legacy And Implications Of San Antonio Independent School District V. Rodriguez, Charles J. Ogletree Jr.

Richmond Public Interest Law Review

The Supreme Court's school desegregation case law has been a confusing maze of fits and starts. In 1954, a unanimous Court declared in Brown v. Board of Education that education "must be made available to all on equal terms." Yet, less than 20 years later, the Court found a Texas education financing plan that allowed for significant differences in funding between school districts to be constitutional. This Article examines that decision, San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez, in more detail. It also discusses the case's legacy and numerous unresolved issues that still impact the Latino community today. Part II …