- Thomas Cooley Law School in Michigan, facing class-action suit, subpoenas Colorado lawprof Paul Campos, vocal critic of schools’ disclosure policies [Campos, Scott Greenfield]
- “Maintenance of effort”: Yielding to special ed lobby, feds won’t let local school districts cut outlays [Nirvi Shah, Ed Week] “Havoc in classrooms” feared as NYC pushes least restrictive placement of disabled students [NY Post] Feds to universities: it’s an ADA violation to ask suicidal students to leave [WFAE, Popehat]
- Arizona lawmaker proposes ban on political viewpoint discrimination in faculty hiring [Inside Higher Ed]
- “University of Maryland Cuts Varsity Cheer Program” [Washington Post] Title IX competes with true gender equality
[Doug Robinson, Deseret News via Saving Sports]
- Due-process revolution in school discipline hasn’t worked out as intended [Richard Arum, The Atlantic] Heavy police presence in schools is something new [J.D. Tuccille, Reason] “Education Department Pushes Racial Quotas in School Discipline” [Hans Bader, CEI]
- “What Yale and the Times Did to Patrick Witt” [KC Johnson, Minding the Campus]
Tagged as:
colleges and universities,
disability & schools,
law schools,
New York Times,
school discipline,
schools,
suici,
Title IX,
Yale
- “Public pool owners struggle to meet chair-lift deadline” [Springfield, Ill. Journal-Register, earlier]
- Punitive damages aren’t vested entitlement/property, so why the surprise they’d be cut off in an administered Chrysler bankruptcy? [Adler]
- More on how Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) reauthorization would chip away rights of accused [Bader, Heritage, earlier]
- Defending sale of raw milk on libertarian principle shouldn’t mean overlooking its real risks [Greg Conko/CEI; Mark Perry on one of many heavy-handed enforcement actions against milk vendors]
- More tributes to longtime Cato Institute chairman Bill Niskanen [Regulation magazine (PDF), earlier]
- Asbestos lawyers wrangle about alleged swiping of client files [Above the Law]
- “Nathan Chapman & Michael McConnell: Due Process as Separation of Powers” [SSRN via Rappaport, Liberty & Law]
Tagged as:
asbestos,
Cato Institute,
Chrysler,
colleges and universities,
constitutional law,
pools,
punitive damages
“A federal judge in Indiana ordered lawyers including the prominent firm of Motley Rice to pay ITT Educational Services almost $400,000 in legal fees for pursuing a ‘frivolous’ lawsuit the judge said was ‘based on a completely false story.’” In line with the reluctance of American judges to award Rule 11 sanctions, the judge awarded only a small fraction of the defendant’s actual outlay in attorney’s fees, which ran into many millions. Motley Rice is a chief beneficiary of the ongoing income stream of the tobacco litigation fees, which return $500 million a year to an assortment of plaintiff’s firms. [Dan Fisher, Forbes]
Tagged as:
colleges and universities,
Motley Rice,
sanctions,
whistleblowers
“A federal judge Tuesday okayed a lawsuit claiming the City of Ithaca and Cornell University are liable for the 2010 death of a student.” The father of Bradley Marc Ginsburg “alleges the defendants did not do enough to prevent suicides from the [Thurston Avenue] bridge.” [Ithaca Independent]
Tagged as:
colleges and universities,
suicide
News of higher education: “A New York woman has filed a lawsuit against her former Roman Catholic college in Boston, claiming administrators didn’t do enough to help her when she complained that her roommate was having too much sex in their dorm room.” [Denise Lavoie, NBC New York]
Tagged as:
colleges and universities
Assuming the Rutgers roommate/consummate jerk should be facing criminal charges in the aftermath of Tyler Clementi’s suicide — a big if — it shouldn’t be over purported “bias intimidation,” argues Jacob Sullum [Reason, more; Jersey Conservative] Earlier on the Clementi case here, here, and here. And a Boston case has prompted questions about the reach of hate-crime law: “Are Lesbian Gay-Bashers Guilty of a Hate Crime?” [Atlantic Wire]
Related: At Psychology Today, Israel (Izzy) Kalman writes a blog critical of the rise of the “anti-bullying industry” and attendant efforts to criminalize for the first time many personal interactions both verbal and behavioral.
Tagged as:
bullying,
colleges and universities,
hate crimes,
New Jersey
“The driver of a bus on which Florida A&M University drum major Robert Champion was beaten to death in November stood guard while he was assaulted by fellow band members, according to a lawsuit filed Monday in Orlando by Champion’s family.” The bus was parked in a hotel parking lot with the driver not aboard during the incident. The president of the sued company disputes the contentions, saying the driver “did not see any hazing aboard the bus on which Champion collapsed. ‘If she would have seen that, we definitely would have stopped it,’” he said. [Orlando Sentinel]
Tagged as:
colleges and universities,
deep pocket,
Florida A&M
Two years ago a public outcry helped defeat a Virginia proposal that would have required that divorced noncustodial parents continue to support children in college through age 23. (Our post at the time.) Now, as Hans Bader of CEI points out, Maryland’s legislature is considering a bill (up for hearing Feb. 23) to impose this obligation on parents. It doesn’t look as radical as the Virginia bill — the support obligation would only extend through age 21, not 23, for example — and it’s easy to see why it might appeal to the state university and its budgeters, as well as to pro-custodial-parent constituencies in family law. But it still raises some of the same questions of fairness and practicality, given that children past 18 are legally independent and need not be even on speaking terms with the estranged parents, who may be in no financial position to consider, say, finishing their own delayed college plans, yet are expected to foot college bills for their estranged offspring.
Tagged as:
child support,
colleges and universities,
Maryland
- Ninth Circuit panel strikes down California’s Prop 8 [Volokh, Kerr, Magliocca, Lithwick, Steve Chapman]
- Judge dismisses PETA “killer whales enslaved” case [Caroline May/Daily Caller, CNN, earlier]
- “Patent Troll Claims Ownership of Interactive Web – And Might Win” [Joe Mullin/Wired, earlier; more on testimony by Web father Tim Berners-Lee] Update: Ding Dong! Jury rejects claim;
- “Further Analysis of the Bottle-Rocket Case” [Lowering the Bar, earlier]
- As patients suffer: “The War Over Prescription Painkillers,” start of a Radley Balko series [HuffPo parts one, two so far]
- Richard Epstein on federal fiat and Yale disciplinary procedure [Defining Ideas] Under new-style rules at Yale, will a professor even be aware he’s been accused and henceforth is to be “monitored”? [KC Johnson]
- Jim Copland testimony on abuses in government contingent-fee litigation [Manhattan Institute, PDF] “Parens patriae” proposal to replace class actions with state attorney general suits, but with private entrepreneurial bar still in saddle [Adam Zimmerman/Prawfs on Myriam Gilles/Gary Friedman, SSRN]
Tagged as:
animal rights,
attorneys general,
class actions,
colleges and universities,
Ninth Circuit,
patent trolls,
pharmaceuticals,
same-sex marriage,
Yale
- New York Times sets off furor with article on role of ABA accreditation in driving up law school costs, a theme explored by several recent authors including me in Schools for Misrule [David Segal/NYT, Somin, Bader/Examiner, Above the Law, Gideon Kanner, Matt Leichter/AmLaw, Macchiarola/Minding the Campus, Brian Tamanaha (on ABA dispute with fledgling Duncan Law School)] ABA president claims high tuitions unrelated to accreditation rules [Reuters]
- Related: “Data Show Feds Will Lend $54.3 Billion to U.S. Law Schools by 2020″ [Matt Leichter, AmLaw]
- The politics of the AALS, which just held its annual meeting in Washington [Bainbridge repost]
- Former North Dakota attorney general files spate of age bias suits after many schools turn him down for law professor position [TaxProf, earlier]
- “Some Words of Advice for Law Students, from 1811” [Kyle Graham (Santa Clara), guestblogging at Concurring Opinions last month; among topics of Graham's other posts were the famous tort case of Summers v. Tice and suspect kinds of law review articles]
- Prof. Lawrence Connell’s fight with Widener U. and its offended dean in “wild hypotheticals” case [Hans Bader/Minding The Campus, earlier here, here, etc.]
Tagged as:
age discrimination,
bar associations,
colleges and universities,
law schools
- Students respond to L.A.’s “healthful” school lunch initiative with a loud “yuck” [L.A. Times, Michelle Malkin/NRO]
- L.I.: School suspends students for “Tebow” kneeling in hallway [Newsday]
- “Growing number of college students asking for wiggle room with their academic workloads due to mental health issues.” [WSJ]
- Proposal to address “learning disability” tangle: give all test-takers extra time [Ruth Colker, SSRN, see p. 126] A.D.H.D. diagnosis and the academic struggle for advantage [Melana Zyla Vickers, NYT "Room for Debate"] “Pediatrician Group Seeks to Boost ADHD Diagnoses” [Sullum]
- Will distance technology defeat the teachers’ union? [Larry Sand, City Journal]
- Time to repeal Maryland’s awful “maintenance of effort” law on school funding [WaPo, Baltimore Sun] Contra: MSEA, PDF.
- French-language cops: “Montreal schools move to scan playground chatter” [Ottawa Citizen]
Tagged as:
Canada,
colleges and universities,
disability & schools,
labor unions,
obesity,
schools,
testing
- Executive with “Autism Speaks” group quits to found group more aligned with scientific opinion on cause of condition [SciAm]
- Here comes the ban-cigarettes-entirely crusade [Peter Singer on forthcoming Robert Proctor "Golden Holocaust"] “Parents try to blame Four Loko for son getting shot” [Elie Mystal, Above the Law] Still-relevant cartoon from ’30s on Federal War on Drugs (or Booze, take your pick) [Perry]
- Controversy over definition of medical disorders in DSM-V has implications for workplace law including ADA, FMLA [Labor Related, petition]
- “Not Safe to Display an American Flag in an American High School” [Volokh]
- “Criminal Defense Lawyer Charged in Alleged $1.5M Fraud On Clients Obtained Under False Pretenses” [ABA Journal, Greenfield; Texas]
- Father of Notre Dame student who died says family never considered suing [Chicago Tribune]
- “The Ignominious End Of The Digitek Mass Tort” [Beck]
Tagged as:
autism,
colleges and universities,
don't,
pharmaceuticals,
psychiatry,
tobacco
