The 2016 presidential election campaign and its aftermath have underscored worrisome trends in the present state of our democracy: the extreme polarization of the electorate, the dismissal of people with opposing views, and the widespread acceptance and circulation of one-sided and factually erroneous information. Only a small proportion of those…

Different from more traditional policy-making avenues, the courts provide an antipolitical arena that does not require broad agreement from various constituents for policy enactment. Seeking to guide court decisions on these policy issues, individuals and organizations have filed "amicus" briefs that increasingly include social science…

This article discusses concerns about how Neil M. Gorsuch, a U.S. Supreme Court nominee, might influence decisions regarding cases involving the appropriate scope of services guaranteed by federal special-education law, government aid to religious institutions providing educational services, and how intellectual property law applies to sports…

March 18, 2013, marked the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court's unanimous 1963 decision in "Gideon v. Wainwright." "Gideon," a petty criminal, accused of suspicion of breaking and entry was the seminal Supreme Court case that ruled that defendants in criminal cases have the right to an attorney even if they cannot afford to…

This dissertation sought to determine if federal-level, post-secondary student freedom of expression case law was developing in a similar path to that at the K-12 level of education. It also investigated the ways in which a K-12, highly speech-restrictive legal standard arising from the K-12 case "Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier" has been…

This dissertation explored the constitutionality of a Georgia law, under both the Georgia Constitution and the United States Constitution, which allows for the removal of elected school board members based on threatened loss of district accreditation. The problem is that elected board members are being removed from office based on district…

"Pin-the-Tail-on-the-Constitution" is an engaged-learning activity that has been conducted in 26 classes over the past four years. The activity teaches multiple themes commonly included in a variety of courses on American politics such as federalism, congressional powers, the role of the federal courts, and the relevance of the commerce…

The author reports on the ruling of a divided appellate court that held that the state law unconstitutionally made it harder for minorities to seek preferences than for other groups. The court struck down a voter-passed ban on the use of race-conscious admissions by Michigan's public colleges, holding that the measure had unconstitutionally put…

On December 21, 1911, Fremont Weeks, an employee of the Adams Express Company, was arrested while on the job at Union Station in Kansas City, Missouri. Police suspected that Weeks was selling and "transmitting chances" in a lottery, which at the time was considered gambling, an illegal action in Missouri. While Weeks was being held at…

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…

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…