The latest episode in the long-running struggle for control of the Constitution, and the political power that goes with it, is playing out in the federal courts in California. The contending philosophies are originalism, which holds that the Constitution should be read as it was originally understood by the framers and ratifiers, and the congeries…

Under Federal law, State and local educational agencies (hereinafter "districts") are required to provide all children with equal access to public education at the elementary and secondary level. Thie Dear Colleague letter was written to remind school districts of the Federal obligation to provide equal educational opportunities to all…

Background/Context: On June 28, 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in "Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District #1" (PICS) that school districts not currently under court order for racial desegregation could not, under most circumstances, use race as a criterion for assigning students to schools. Purpose: In this…

This article reviews the impacts of the civil rights policies framed in the 1960s and the anti-civil rights political and legal movements that reversed them. It documents rising segregation by race and poverty. The policy reversals and transformation of U.S. demography require a new civil rights strategy. Vast immigrations, the sinking White…

This paper examines how a large conditional grants program influenced school desegregation in the American South. Exploiting newly collected archival data and quasi-experimental variation in potential per-pupil federal grants, we show that school districts with more at risk in 1966 were more likely to desegregate just enough to receive their…

This study examined federal and state court decisions related to student Fourth Amendment rights following the "New Jersey v. T.L.O." ruling in 1985. There has been minimal research in judicial treatment of students' Fourth Amendment rights across regions of the country and less to what extent regional rulings implicitly or explicitly…

The author reports on how U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas' opinions in youths'-rights cases reflect his "originalist" thinking. Justice Thomas, 63, marks two decades on the court Oct. 23, and a hallmark of his tenure is his willingness to carve out a solitary stance on certain issues. Particularly in cases involving schools…

By the end of the 2008-2009 term, Justice David Souter's decision to return to New Hampshire and President Obama's nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to replace him on the bench had taken over the Supreme Court news cycle. In the end, the consensus has been that, with the possible exception of criminal justice issues, swapping out Souter for Sotomayor…

In June 2011 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that video games enjoy full free speech protections and that the regulation of violent game sales to minors is unconstitutional. The Supreme Court also referred to psychological research on violent video games as "unpersuasive" and noted that such research contains many methodological flaws.…

Of the three branches of government, the Supreme Court usually receives the least national attention. Not so this year. In addition to another changing of the guard with the retirement of Justice Stevens and the nomination of Elena Kagan, the 2009-2010 term generated a great deal of controversy. And in a number of instances, the public's keen…

This fall, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in a case that promises to affect the lives of many children. Up for debate is whether a law aimed at curbing children's access to violent video games violates their constitutional right to free speech. Signed 5 years ago by Governor Schwarzenegger, the California statute, which has yet to take…

English legal commentator William Blackstone described the writ of habeas corpus as a second Magna Carta, and Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall called it the "great writ." It has been part of the Anglo-American common law tradition since the Middle Ages. In the United States, it has been a source of tension between state and…

The authors' recent study of all published decisions in state and federal courts concerning superintendent termination led to a surprising finding: The decisions overwhelmingly favored school districts. In this article, the authors examine several superintendents' intriguing cases. The authors also discuss practical lessons for superintendents.

This dissertation is a "public forum" legal case study on the federal court case "Madison v. Wolf" (2005) involving a conflict over the exercise of First Amendment speech rights on the Auraria Higher Education Center (AHEC) campus in Denver, Colorado. The dissertation involves the content analysis of the "Mason v.…

Federal court cases are examined in an effort to view recent First Amendment rights infringements which have occurred in Mississippi. Case law reinforces students' rights to wear same-sex outfits to school functions as well as to bring same-sex dates. Connection to a recent civil rights investigation by the NAACP into a north Mississippi middle…