Building Better Lawyers
The watchers on the walls defending rights and liberties are often lawyers, yet those lawyers must ascend to their posts themselves, their legal training preparing them little for the climb. Law schools must do more.
Education
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Fisher: Revisiting CRCL’s Responses to Hopwood v. Texas
With this year’s big affirmative action case, Fisher v. University of Texas, being one of the highlights of the Supreme Court’s current term, it is worth circling back to CRCL’s previous treatment of the issue and reflecting on the moment in the 1990s when Hopwood killed UT’s earlier attempt to use affirmative action to remedy a history of segregation. What can these articles tell us about the issues at stake in Fisher? There seem to be two general lessons.
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Tuesday: No More Separate But Equal in Alabama?
On Tuesday, Alabama will vote on Amendment 4, which would delete segregationist language from the Alabama Constitution. Officially named Senate Bill 112, the proposed Amendment eliminates the poll tax and deletes the following provision: “Separate schools shall be provided for white and colored children, and no child of either race [...]
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CR-CL Podcast – Episode 16 – Affirmative Action and Judicial Nominations
With Matt in the hosting chair this week, CR-CL’s Executive Editors for Online Content, Noah Kaplan and Matt Giffin take a close look at this week’s oral arguments in Fisher v. University of Texas and at the pace and process of President’s Obama’s judicial nominations. The show begins with our weekly news round-up, This Week in Civil Rights and Civil Liberties.
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The Fight For Equal Treatment Is Not Yet Won
Today’s national Civil Rights dialogue focuses largely on immigration, reproductive issues, and LGBTQ rights. Certainly, each of these issues critically requires our nation’s attention, but they should not be discussed to the exclusion of “old fashioned” racial discrimination. The African-American Civil Rights Movement is the foundation upon which these movements [...]
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SAT Scores, Pell Grants, and Access to Higher Education
SAT Scores are down nationwide, the Wall Street Journal reported Monday. According to recent data from The College Board, the average SAT score for the class of 2012 was 1055, out of a possible 2400. College readiness is indicated by a minimum score of 1550. Thus, 57% of test takers [...]
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Teacher Professionalization Is Good For Students And Teachers
If teachers are paid well, which in Chicago they are, then they should expect to perform their work the same way other professionals, e.g., lawyer, doctors, engineers, financial professionals, perform theirs. Teachers should expect to be hired to perform to a certain expectation of success, to be compared to the success of their peers at achieving those expectations, and to be fired if they consistently fail to meet them. The ultimate result would be the achievement of the one thing that all sides in this fight seem to agree that they are working, the best possible education for Chicago’s public school students.
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CR-CL Podcast – Episode 11 – Identity-Affirming School Speech and the Crack-Cocaine Sentencing Disparity
Noah interviews Professor Ari Ezra Waldman about students’ right to speak affirmingly about sexual orientation, same-sex marriage, and gay identity in schools. Noah and Matt discuss the retroactivity of the Fair Sentencing Act, passed to address the disparity between federal sentences for crack and powder cocaine possession, how that disparity came about, and whether even the lessened disparity is justified.
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Some (Polemical) Reflections on the Dartmouth Hazing Controversy
Rolling Stone recently published a long story about Andrew Lohse, a Dartmouth senior who blew the whistle—assuming there was a whistle to blow—about hazing practices at his school’s social fraternities. There is nothing surprising about Lohse’s claims; social fraternities have long been known to bring out the lowest instincts in American college students.
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Colloquium Video: "Roper, Graham, and J.D.B.: Re-defining Juveniles' Constitutional Rights"
Article drafts and video of CR-CL’s recent colloquium. On Monday, March 26, 2012, the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review, in conjunction with the Juvenile Law Center and the Milbank Foundation, presented a colloquium: Roper, Graham, and J.D.B.: Redefining Juveniles’ Constitutional Rights. Guests at the event included Martin Guggenheim of NYU Law School, Marsha Levick and Robert Schwartz of the Juvenile Law Center, Michael Dale, of the Nova Southeastern Law Center, and the Hon. Jay Blitzman, chief judge of the Middlesex County Juvenile Court.
