Search results

The number of African American males entering the legal profession continues to remain stagnate, with only marginal increases during the past 15 years. Even though the intentional exclusion of African Americans from state law schools was declared unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court more than 50 years ago, other “neutral” institutional policies and requirements have stifled the growth and development of African American males attending law school and advancing in the legal profession. Even with a number of legal victories, African American males have lost the battle to end institutional practices, which continue to exclude them from admission to law school.

This chapter considers the school-to-prison pipeline (STPP) within the United States as a network of flows and feedback loops that connects the education and delinquency systems. This system is heavily biased to funnel students with disabilities, disproportionately from low-income minority families, away from productive educational outcomes through punitive, exclusionary, and restrictive measures that too often result in incarceration. Congress intended special education and disability rights laws to ameliorate injustice and ensure long-term positive outcomes for all students. Through a systems theory perspective, this chapter outlines key leverage points inherent in disability rights laws, which can and should be activated to interrupt and reverse the STPP. Many provisions within the law are overlooked or inadequately enacted within current educational practices. The authors present problem-solving strategies, rooted in the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and other disability rights laws, for educators, juvenile justice advocates, and policymakers to use in order to reduce school exclusion and incarceration of vulnerable youth and to provide education opportunity for all students.

The purpose of this study is to examine a principal's knowledge of school law in Kuwait. It further aims to examine the relationship between a principal's knowledge of school law and other variables.

The study employed a quantitative research paradigm. Data for this study, collected via survey, were collected from a sample of 369 public school principals.

Using descriptive and inferential statistical methods, the findings indicated that school principals have only limited knowledge about the legal rights of teachers and students. Furthermore, the results revealed a significant difference in knowledge of school law relative to a principal's gender, school level, years of experience, knowledge source and the number of completed school law training courses.

The implications for professional development programs which prepare all school leaders to serve the needs of students’ and teachers’ rights are included.

Studies showed that there is a lack of research regarding a principal's legal knowledge in the Arab countries. As such, this study examined a school principal's knowledge of school law in Kuwait and discussed the associated implications for principal professional development programs.

In recent years there has been a significant increase in the involvement of Australian schools with various aspects of the law and this has led to a number of claims that education has become legalised. A major consequence of this development is the need for principals to have a level of legal literacy sufficient to identify when a legal problem is developing in their school. Moreover, given the increased involvement of schools with the law, there would seem to be a need for principals to introduce preventive legal risk management strategies into school policies and practices. However, to implement such programmes, principals require a sound knowledge of those aspects of the law that they are required to manage. A recent study of some 300 principals from government schools in Queensland raises serious questions, however, regarding the level of principals’ professional knowledge of the law. This paper examines the concept of the legalisation of education and the extent to which school principals’ professional knowledge is adequate to meet the demands the law is making of them.

Prospective students of law are required to demonstrate competence in certain disciplines to attain admission to law school. The grounding in the disciplines is expected to demonstrate competencies required to excel academically in law school. The purpose of this study is to investigate the relevance of the law school admission test to predicting the competencies.

The assessment is based on administrative records of 815 students admitted at Makerere University’s law school on the basis of their performance in the test. Grades obtained in advanced level (A-Level) of secondary education subjects, namely, literature, history, divinity and economics, were adopted as a measure of competence in the disciplines. The outcome of the test was modeled by performance of enrollees in the subject, their characteristics (gender, nationality, entry scheme and academic qualifications at enrollment) and first-year grade point average using a quantile regression.

With the exception of enrollees’ characteristics, no significant variations in the outcome of the test were noted in the results between students who did not do the subjects at the A-Level and those who obtained Grade A (p > 0.05). Similar findings in performance were noted between students who obtained Grade A and those with other grades in the disciplines.

The findings confirm that admission tests to law school are a measure of mental rather than educational or academic ability. However, the results may not be applied to candidates in countries where a bachelor’s degree is a requirement for admission to law school.

The study provides an empirical investigation of whether the admission test to law school predicts competencies required to excel academically in the undergraduate program.

The purpose of this chapter is to examine selected state laws regarding cyberbullying. The advances in technology have allowed bullying to take an online form, where bullies can remain anonymous and access their targets 24 hours a day. The online bullying has left school leaders in a legal dilemma as to how and when to address an incident that occurs off school grounds. The laws which guide school leaders are found at the state level. The major inconsistencies between state laws are illustrated in this chapter. The findings in recent research reveal that some state bullying laws define specific terms such as electronic communication, and intimidation, and harassment. Some state laws provide a detailed protocol for how teachers and administrators should report and handle online bullying that has an impact on the school environment. However, some states leave developing a protocol up to individual school districts. The varying school cyberbullying laws and policies mean that leaders across the United States do not have a unified way to handle issues originating off-campus. However, school leaders should have a comprehensive policy which helps to address cyberbullying issues. This chapter includes a critical examination of current laws in the states and a review of proposed federal statutes presently stalled in the U.S. Congress.

Feminist legal activists in law schools developed what we call critical community tactics beginning in the late 1960s to bring about important cultural change in the legal educational arena. These feminist activists challenged the male-dominant culture and succeeded in making law schools and legal scholarship more gender inclusive. Here, we develop the critical community tactics concept and show how these tactics produce cultural products which ultimately, as they are integrated into the broader culture, change the cultural landscape. Our work then is a study of how social movement activists can bring about cultural change. The feminist legal activists’ cultural products and the integration of them into the legal academy provide evidence of feminist legal activist success in shifting the legal institutional culture. We conclude that critical community tactics provide an important means for social movement activists to bring about cultural change, and scholars examining social movement efforts in other institutional settings may benefit from considering the role of critical community tactics.

The first contribution to this section is by Richard Schmalensee titled “Thoughts on the Chicago school legacy in U.S. antitrust.” It appears the purpose of this essay is to set up a target for the rest of the contributors to shoot at – a target that is emphatically pro-Chicago. In his essay, Schmalensee reviews some of the aspects of U.S. antitrust policy that outraged Chicago school lawyers and economists in the 1970s. He takes a brief look at some of Chicago's subsequent victories that he claims are now generally accepted as positive changes. And finally, he argues that some of Chicago's lost battles also constitute positive aspects of its legacy. His discussion is focused on four broad issues: the objectives of antitrust, the past policy toward “no-fault” concentration, the treatment of productive efficiency, and the evaluation of non-standard business conduct (pp. 11–12).

The purpose of this paper is to assess the perspectives of law enforcement executives and public school principals regarding school resource officers (SROs), armed teachers, and armed school administrators in order to inform the policy discussion surrounding school safety issues.

This study utilizes data collected from two surveys that were sent to law enforcement executives and public school principals in South Carolina. Respondents were asked about their experience with SROs and their perspectives on these officers’ ability to maintain school safety. Both groups of respondents were also asked about their attitudes regarding arming school employees.

There is a large amount of support for SROs from both law enforcement executives and principals. However, in general, both groups of respondents do not believe armed administrators or armed teachers to be an effective school safety strategy.

SROs have been the primary strategy adopted by schools to maintain safety, but in the wake of the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, public outcry and political debate has spawned a number of proposed alternatives. Among these alternative security measures has been the idea of arming school teachers and/or administrators. However, there appears to have been little effort to empirically consider the perspectives of those directly impacted by school safety policy decisions. In particular, a gap in the literature remains regarding the perceptions of police executives and school principals concerning school safety policies and how the attitudes of these key actors compare. Thus, the current study addresses this gap by exploring the perspectives of key school safety stakeholders.

This chapter focuses on the importance of having a working knowledge of school law. Such knowledge is critical for all schools officials, but is especially important for leaders of charter schools. If school leaders always strive for legal compliance, it can help insure the survival of the school, as well as their own tenure. Legal compliance, however, is often a moving target. Not only must charter school leaders be aware of state and federal law pertaining to charter schools, they must also be aware of the laws regulating public schools as well as policies in school districts with which they may be affiliated. A charter school site administrator must know the law or have access to legal counsel to address specific areas of the law including special education, school code, public bidding, student discipline, labor and employment practices, public meeting requirements, and their respective state's charter school law. Understanding the law is a monumental task which carries with it important safeguards not only for the future of charter schools but also for the future of our educational system which is served so well by these leaders.