This paper deals with the class action suit as a litigious phenomenon, its future possibilities as an emerging field of legal specialization, and its potential benefits to those classes who look to it as a way of attaining relief that they might otherwise find foreclosed to them were they to seek court assistance acting as individuals. Four…

What judges are doing "with increasing boldness," in fact, is telling school people to solve their own cases instead of bringing them to court. (Author)

School boards can (and, I believe, should for their own protection) encourage their administrators and teachers to be child advocates, giving the lie to the canard--often used successfully by plaintiffs--that school officials traditionally are authoritarian, arbitrary, and unilateral in their procedures. (Author)

A 1983 federal appeals court decision says the Secretary of Agriculture cannot establish time and place restrictions on the sale of snack items in schools. If snack items are to be banned from schools, the School Lunch Act must be reworded. (MD)

Examines court cases affecting academic freedom. Observes that the courts have not established a separate and independent right to academic freedom, although they have almost unanimously upheld the right of the student to learn and the teacher to teach that which is controversial utilizing the First Amendment protections of freedom of expression…

This publication briefly discusses the legal status of various methods of school discipline and related efforts to control the behavior of elementary and secondary school students. Specific topics examined include corporal punishment, suspension, expulsion, exclusion from extracurricular activities, detention, truancy, verbal correction, a variety…

A tort is an actionable wrong, other than breach of contract, that the courts will recognize and intervene to equalize. There are three questions the court will ask: Did someone owe someone else a duty? Was there a breach of duty owed? Was the breach the proximate cause of the plaintiff's injury? The grounds for injury actions may be classified as…

Although school board members traditionally have been immune from civil suits, recent litigations in some states have held school board members personally liable for certain torts, thus making liability insurance for school boards a good business practice. (LLR)

Once a teacher can establish that conduct protected by the Constitution was the major cause of his/her dismissal, the burden of establishing another cause of termination falls on the school board. (Author/IRT)

There are grounds for concern about testing's relationship to the law because where a constitutional issue is involved, the burden of proof of need for the test immediately shifts to educators. Throughout the history of testing in this country, the courts have often intervened to assure that students, while they are in school, are free from…

This paper explores the legal ramifications associated with teaching moral and spiritual values in the public schools. Following a history of the problem, the paper discusses four schemes currently used for teaching these values to the young: (1) withdrawing children from public schools to either enroll them in private or parochial schools, or…

Describes procedures required of boards of education by the courts in disciplining students. (JF)

Recent developments in school law by a foremost school law authority. (LR)