Law in the news; Student protest and the law

The National Educational Radio Network presents law in the news with Professor Joseph R. Julian, Associate Dean of the University of Michigan Law School. The United States Supreme Court has a case for decision which could well define the precise legal status of student demonstrations on both college and high school campuses. Whether you're fed up with a mass meeting so frequently reported in the press and think it's about time students limited their activities to the classroom, or whether on the other hand you believe that we're entering a golden age of education since students are at long last really manifesting a concern about the world. The decision in tinker against Des Moines Independent Community School District should be of interest. The controversy before the court stems from a series of events beginning in December of 1965. During that month it came to the attention of certain school officials that several students intended to wear black arm bands for the purpose of expressing their descent to the

war in Vietnam. The defendant school district promulgated a regulation barring the arm bands. Nevertheless, the plaintiffs in this action now before our highest court wore the arm bands to school in order so they testified to mourn those having died in the war and to support a then pending proposal that the forthcoming truths be extended indefinitely. Each pupil violating the school regulation was dismissed and did not return to school until after Christmas and then without the arm bands. The issue put to the court and issue with potentially broad ramifications is whether forbidding this kind of silent demonstration deprived the students of constitutional rights secured by the freedom of speech clause of the First Amendment. The federal judge hearing the case in the trial court upheld the school board's regulation. In his opinion he stated, officials of the defendant school district have the responsibility for maintaining a scholarly discipline atmosphere within the classroom and not only have

a right but an obligation to prevent anything which might be disruptive of such an atmosphere. Judge Stevenson then concluded, unless school officials are unreasonable the courts should not interfere. A position often heard when the courts have been asked to rule on other school regulations. This case does however involve rights of greater value than those involved in the long hair miniscirt issue discussed here some weeks ago. Free speech while not absolute is certainly a right of special value in a free society. An increasing number of cases have been decided by the lower federal courts in recent years. These courts having reviewed the extent to which the first and 14th amendments protect public and high school students to demonstrate on campus in behalf of particular political beliefs. In a case arising in the fifth circuit a court of appeals having jurisdiction over the southern states, public school children were held constitutionally protected in the wearing of freedom buttons.

There in that case being no evidence that these buttons caused material or substantial disruption. In Alabama federal court at the trial level ordered a student reinstated following his suspension for failure to comply with the state college president's order that he was not to print an editorial critical of the president. The other hand barring of the freedom buttons was upheld by the fifth circuit court of appeals where the records supported a finding that the buttons in that school precipitated an unusual degree of commotion, boisterous conduct, collision with rights of others and the undermining of authority. But the United States Supreme Court has yet to speak on school regulations involving free speech claims. What about conduct involving physical acts? Is the constitutional guideline regulations to be valid must be reasonable under the circumstances? Or must authorities show a clear and present danger or some like more rigorous than reasonably necessary base for the limitation of political expression in our schools?

But what extent does the minority of the persons involved or within those under the legal age the youth justify restrictions on modes of expression which would be constitutionally offensive if applied to adults? Where freedom of expression is involved? How much should courts defer to educators judgment as to what may or may not adversely affect the educational environment? And as important should a ban on arm bands, the issue in the case before the Supreme Court, be viewed as properly upheld on the grounds that since non-protesting children required as they are by law to attend classes where arm bands are being worn, have a right not to be exposed as a captive audience to the protest. This is a time when it's important to know just what authority school officials have. Only then can intelligent judgments be made on difficult issues, issues which require the balancing of freedoms we consider in violet and the need for a sane educational environment.

Professor Joseph R. Jullen, Associate Dean of the University of Michigan Law School has presented law in the news recorded by the University of Michigan Broadcasting Service. This is National Educational Radio Network.