Preview of Forest Grove School District v. T.A.

Should disabled children who do not get the individualized help they need at public schools be able to force their public schools to pay for them to attend private schools? The Supreme Court will grapple with that question during oral arguments on April 28 in Forest Grove School District v. T.A. In her preview of the case, E. Chaney Hall boils the case down to statutory interpretation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Hall points out that though 1997 amendments to the act narrowed students\u27 ability to force public schools to pay private-school tuition, those amendments did not completely foreclose tuition payments in cases where a school provided no special education whatsoever. Hall argues that, as a matter of equity, the Court should interpret the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act to permit tuition reimbursement for disabled children who do not receive any special education from their public schools

Mr. Try-It Goes to Washington: Law and Policy at the Agricultural Adjustment Administration

In December 1933, Jerome Frank, the general counsel of the Agricultural Adjustment Administration but better for writing Law and the Modern Mind (1930), a sensational attack on legal formalism, told an audience at the Association of American Law Schools a parable about two lawyers in the New Deal, each forced to interpret same, ambiguous statutory language. The first lawyer, “Mr. Absolute,” reasoned from the text and canons of statutory interpretation without regard for the desirability of the outcome. “Mr. Try-It,” in contrast, began with the outcome he thought desirable. He then said to himself, “The administration is for it, and justifiably so. It is obviously in line with the general intention of Congress as shown by legislative history. The statute is ambiguous. Let us work out an argument, if possible, so to construe the statute as to validate this important program.” Although the memoranda the two produced were interchangeable, Mr. Try-It wrote his in a fifth the time. Although the professors in attendance might have nodded approvingly, Frank’s speech, later printed in the Congressional Record, was startlingly impolitic in its muddying of a distinction between law and policy that he insisted upon when battling administrators over the terms of marketing agreements for agricultural commodities. How Frank actually drew the line owed less to his legal realist jurisprudence that the persuasiveness of his two associate general counsels, the radicals Lee Pressman and Alger Hiss

Missing the Forest for the Trees: Forest Grove School District v. T.A.

[Excerpt] “The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) guarantees children who qualify as children with disabilities the right to receive a free appropriate public education (FAPE). There are many points at which parents and school districts may disagree regarding the provision of a FAPE, but as the U.S. Supreme Court has determined in Forest Grove School District v. T.A., when parents and a school district disagree regarding whether children should be identified as children with disabilities, an appropriate remedy could be tuition reimbursement.

A generalization of Voronoi's reduction theory and its application

We consider Voronoi's reduction theory of positive definite quadratic forms which is based on Delone subdivision. We extend it to forms and Delone subdivisions having a prescribed symmetry group. Even more general, the theory is developed for forms which are restricted to a linear subspace in the space of quadratic forms. We apply the new theory to complete the classification of totally real thin algebraic number fields which was recently initiated by Bayer-Fluckiger and Nebe. Moreover, we apply it to construct new best known sphere coverings in dimensions 9,..., 15.Comment: 31 pages, 2 figures, 2 tables, (v4) minor changes, to appear in Duke Math.

Justice Shepard and Diversity in the Legal Profession: The Legacy of ICLEO

In his presentation, Dean Klein discusses the importance of role models and mentors in promoting the value of diversity in the legal profession. His presentation includes personal background relating to his own involvement with the Indiana Council on Legal Education Opportunity ("ICLEO") program and highlights the accomplishments of several former ICLEO fellows who have become leaders and role models themselves. Dean Klein concludes by praising former Indiana Supreme Court Chief Justice Randall T. Shepard and the ICLEO program for providing a pipeline of leaders committed to the legal profession and a pipeline of mentors for future generations of lawyers who are committed to the important role that diversity plays in ensuring a system of justice

Lee v. Macon County Board of Education: The Possibilities of Federal Enforcement of Equal Educational Opportunity

Lee v. Macon County Board of Education shows the evolution of the role of the three branches in enforcing the equal protection clause in public education in Alabama. All three branches initially acquiesced in the separate but equal doctrine. The executive and the judicial branches rejected the doctrine in Brown, but the legislative branch remained silent until 1964. Despite Congress’ failure to authorize a federal role in desegregation, the Department of Justice was an active participant in Lee beginning in 1963. When Congress finally did act in 1964 to authorize such suits, it encumbered the authorization with severe limitations. Congress also created a parallel enforcement mechanism, in Title VI of the 1964 Act. In later years, Congress and the executive have emphasized general reform of education as the answer, in legislation such as No Child Left Behind. My paper explores the role of the federal government in the statewide desegregation of Alabama’s public schools. Federal court litigation in Lee v. Macon County Board of Education led to an extraordinary remedy and illustrates the potential for the Departments of Justice and Education to play a key role in reviving the quest for equal educational opportunity through desegregation