Children are Crying and Dying While the Supreme Court is Hiding: Why Public Schools Should Have Broad Authority to Regulate Off-Campus Bullying Speech

Bullying has long been a concern for students, parents, teachers, and school administrators. But technological advances—including the internet, cell phones, and social media—have transformed the nature of bullying and allow “cyberbullies” to extend their reach far beyond the schoolhouse gate. The U.S. Supreme Court established that schools may regulate on-campus speech if the speech creates a substantial disruption of, or material interference with, school activities. However, the Court has yet to rule on a school’s ability to regulate students’ off-campus bullying speech. This Note examines how various courts have approached the issue, analyzes the current circuit split, and ultimately proposes that schools should have the authority to discipline students for off-campus bullying speech

Appendix I: Drafting legislation for development: lessons from a Chinese project

A discussion on the different theoretical issues regarding development legislation that divide economists and lawyers

Corruption of the Politicized University: Lessons from the Orange Revolution in Ukraine

This paper argues that corruption is used on a systematic basis as a mechanism of direct and indirect administrative control from the state level down to local authorities and administrations of public and private institutions. Informal approval of corrupt activities in exchange for loyalty and compliance with the regime is commonplace in many countries. This paper explains how corrupt regimes maximize their position in terms of loyalty and compliance by using the example of the 2004 presidential elections in Ukraine. It presents mechanisms by which political bureaucracies politicize universities in order to influence students and channel their electoral power during the Orange Revolution in Ukraine.corruption, elections, politicization, students, university, Ukraine

On the Limits of Liberalism in Participatory Environmental Governance: Conflict and Conservation in Ukraine\u27s Danube Delta

Participatory management techniques are widely promoted in environmental and protected area governance as a means of preventing and mitigating conflict. The World Bank project that created Ukraine’s Danube Biosphere Reserve included such ‘community participation’ components. The Reserve, however, has been involved in conflicts and scandals in which rumour, denunciation and prayer have played a prominent part. The cases described in this article demonstrate that the way conflict is escalated and mitigated differs according to foundational assumptions about what ‘the political’ is and what counts as ‘politics’. The contrasting forms of politics at work in the Danube Delta help to explain why a 2005 World Bank assessment report could only see failure in the Reserve’s implementation of participatory management, and why liberal participatory management approaches may founder when introduced in settings where relationships are based on non-liberal political ontologies. The author argues that environmental management needs to be rethought in ways that take ontological differences seriously rather than assuming the universality of liberal assumptions about the individual, the political and politics

Tinkering with Student Speech in the Age of Social Media

This dissertation investigates the issue of public junior high and high school students who are punished at school for their online speech that they created when they were off-campus. Specifically, it examines the issue of when students are punished at school for online speech that criticizes teachers and administrators, rather than the issue of student-on-student cyberbullying. Because the United States Supreme Court has not yet accepted any case that involves off-campus online student speech, this dissertation summarizes and analyzes federal appellate court decisions in such cases. Appellate courts in six federal circuits have heard and ruled in cases involving students’ off-campus online speech. This dissertation examines the precedent those courts have applied to outline the circumstances under which the courts find for the student or school officials. Because court decisions depend on the application of precedential case law, this dissertation includes a thorough examination of those major Supreme Court student speech precedents: West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, Bethel School District No. 403 v. Fraser, Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier, and Morse v. Frederick. This research project also examines how legal analysts are currently interpreting the issue of school punishment of off-campus online speech to determine how they recommend courts proceed in such cases. Through review of both precedent and law review articles, it examines two branches of legal thought that underlie the issue: what role courts see schools playing in the education of students as citizens and how far courts are willing to go in extending schools’ “in loco parentis” role to off-campus speech. It also reports on societal issues underlying student speech on social media: how social media users can create “community” online and how teens spend their time online. Because legal research carries with it the tradition of offering guidance to judges on how to rule in a particular area, this dissertation concludes with a proposal for how courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, should rule in cases involving student speech that is critical of school officials or school policy to grant students complete First Amendment protection for all off-campus online speech that does not threaten the school community with violence or libel anyone, whether school official or student