The Fifth Freedom: The Constitutional Duty to Provide Public Education

“The fifth freedom is freedom from ignorance. It means that every[one], everywhere, should be free to develop his [or her] talents to their full potential – unhampered by arbitrary barriers of race or birth or income.” Lyndon B. Johnson This article argues that education is a fundamental human right that the U.S. Supreme Court has failed to recognize because of the Court’s bias towards negative, rather than positive rights. Viewed from the limited perspective of rights as liberties, the concern with declaring a fundamental right to education is that education legislation would be strictly scrutinized, thus causing the undesired result of preventing the enactment of laws regarding education. This would not be a concern if the Court embraced a constitutional analysis that specifically applied to positive rights and duties. Recognizing the fundamental right to public education as a positive right would correct a major inconsistency in U.S. constitutional law and bring fundamental rights doctrine more in line with broader societal understandings of social justice. The article concludes that in order to safeguard the fundamental right to public education, a new form of fundamental rights analysis for all positive rights must be developed. The details of such an analysis will take time to develop, but must begin with an understanding that traditional strict scrutiny analysis cannot be applied in the same way to positive rights as it is to negative rights

Freedom from Ignorance: the International Duty to Provide Public Education

This paper argues that public education is an international human right that the U.S. ought to recognise and protect. Recognising a right to public education would correct a major inconsistency in U.S. law by bringing education rights docrtine more in line with international human rights law. This piece discusses how current U.S. education rights doctrine is inconsistent with U.S. tradition and legal precedent. It then demonstrates how international law recognises public education as a fundamental duty of government before arguing for why the U.S. is obligated to follow international law regarding the right to public education

Recipient of the 2018 Alumni Distinguished Leadership Award

Dr. Imoukhuede\u27s award-winning research at the University of Illinois focuses on how the body controls blood vessel formation with the goal of developing treatments for more than 70 diseases, including breast cancer and cardiovascular disease. She is Assistant Professor in Bioengineering at University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign. Dr. Imoukhuede earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemical Engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a PhD in Bioengineering from California Institute of Technology

A Critique of the Uniquely Adversarial Nature of the U.S. Legal, Economic and Political System and its Implications for Reinforcing Existing Power Hierarchies

This article argues that the uniquely adversarial nature of the United States litigation system, rooted in the medieval English system of trial by battle, has replicated itself in almost all aspects of American society, distinguishing the United States from even its common law counterparts that shared the genesis of their legal systems in English trial by battle. This trial by battle is often characterized in the context of speech by terms such as the \u27marketplace of ideas, or in the context of economics by terms such as the law of the jungle., Even resolution of basic Constitutional concepts are subject to battles between parties, rather than a proactive determination by a Constitutional Court as can be found in many other legal systems. Thus, American society is unique from all other industrialized nations in the extent to which it employs adversarial techniques to resolve conflicts in the areas of contract law, criminal law, constitutional law, labor law, and economic and social policy, in addition to its legal system. This article suggests that the implications of this emphasis on procedure over substance are profound, and that the shibboleth of procedural fairness invoked to justify disparate substantive outcomes may be more illusory than real

Standardization of the Electricity and Economic Potentials of Landfill Gas (LFG) in Lagos, Nigeria.

Globally, various practical data and scholarly estimations of the electricity potentials of landfill gas (LFG) have been forwarded and these can be juxtaposed for estimations in the megacity called Lagos. The calculated values were between 63.22- 700MW of derivable electricity. However, in order to limit observable disparities and ambiguities in these derivations and thus allow for more accurate projections, these estimations can be gauged using as template; -stoichiometry, establishing 50% of landfill gas as methane, assuming 50% of this volume as recoverable, and using a proposed engine efficiency of 30%. This standardization projects a theoretical mean achievable electrical power of 121.69 MW for the Lagos area from a population of about 21 million with a generation per capita (GPC) of 0.63kg with biodegradable content of about 60%. The yearly electrical energy was placed at 1,066,004.4 MWh with tariff revenue in excess of US$106.6 million /yr. An accruing carbon credit of about US$75.59 million /yr is expected from certified emission reduction (CER). The projected derivations can be used as models for evaluation of the landfill gas and electricity potentials in many parts of the world