Academic

Ralston on Enforcing Public Education Rights via a Private Suits

By Lawrence Solum

Sonja Ralston has posted Enforcing Public Educational Rights via a Private Right of Action (Duke Forum for Law and Social Change, Vol. 1, p. 137, 2009) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

Most states provide some form of constitutional guarantee for an adequate public education. Lawsuits to enforce these rights have, however, been largely unsuccessful in obtaining meaningful changes for individual students. Indeed, the only two suits to seek an immediate and personal remedy for particular students were dismissed as non-justiciable political questions because the courts saw no manageable standards. This paper argues that the federal right embodied in the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which courts have successfully managed and enforced for decades, provides a framework for adjudicating these state claims because the substantive rights and problems to be solved are strikingly similar.

Full post as published by Legal Theory Blog on November 25, 2010 (boomark / email).