Freedom of expression for students

The National Educational ready o network presents a law in the news with Professor

Joseph R. Julan associate dean of the University of Michigan Law School.

It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of

speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate. This has been the unmistakable holding of

this court for almost 50 years with these words and others we will

examine the United States Supreme Court. Speaking to Mr Justice Porthos

upheld the right of certain Iowa school children to wear black armbands to class

this in defiance of a school regulation which barred this means of publicizing

objections to the Vietnam War. Dissenting justice black

rights in undisguised disgust. This case wholly

without constitutional reasons in my judgment he says Subject all the public

schools in the country to the whims and caprices of their loudest Mollett. But maybe not their

brightest students. I for one am not fully persuaded that school pupils are wise

enough even with this court's expert help from Washington to run the twenty three

thousand three hundred ninety school systems in our 50 states.

Furthermore the dissenting justice continues. I deny that it has been the

unmistakable holding of this court that students and teachers take with them into the

schoolhouse constitutional right to freedom of speech or expression any

more than they do when they enter the Congress or the Supreme Court. It is a myth.

Justice Black says that any person has a constitutional right to say what he

pleases where he pleases and when he pleases. Now

some editorial comment has joined the Black dissent to the court's seeming expansion of the public

school students freedom of expression. One respected editor puts it this

way the liberties some students are taking with the freedoms they already have

ought to indicate a move in the other direction. The editor continues what chance does a school

have if it must prove that certain individuals were disruptive and that they infringed

upon the rights of other students before it seeks to lay down the law for Pete's sake by that

time the campus riot is almost over. But is this

armband decision so revolutionary so unbelievable in a day and

age of campus and even high school disruption. Does it really provide a battle

flag or should I say a battle cry for the irrational radical Bihi but

one or two percent or less of the student population. I just don't

think so. The Des Moines school authorities promulgated a regulation against the

armed barons but not against any other symbol of political or controversial

significance. Apparently out of fear of what might happen.

But in our system undifferentiated fear or apprehension of

disturbance is not enough to overcome the right to freedom of expression.

Sustaining this fundamental proposition Mr. Justice Fortis seeks to make clear what the court

is not doing as he puts it. The problem presented did not

relate to the regulation of the length of skirts or the type of clothing to hairstyle or

deportment. It did not concern disruptive action or even

group demonstrations. Rather the case before the court as the majority saw

it involved direct primary First Amendment rights akin to pure

speech. There was no evidence of the armband wearing students interfering

or being about to interfere with the school's work or of collision with the rights of other

students to be secure and to be let alone but weren't the school official

acting so as to prevent the disruption which apparently they believe might occur. And if so

did they not act as a reasonable man would under the circumstances. One of the circumstances being

their obligation to maintain an environment suitable for uninterrupted learning by the students and

teaching by the faculty not the other way around. Justice Black certainly

thought so. In his descent he says the original idea of schools which I do not believe

is yet abandoned as worthless or out of date was that children had not yet reached the point of

experience and wisdom which enabled them to teach all of their elders.

Justice for does however holds and perhaps this is the paragraph which school officials everywhere should carefully

note. And now I quote the law on the subject as laid down by the United States Supreme

Court. In order for the state in the person of school officials to justify

prohibition of a particular expression of opinion it must be able to show that its

action was caused by something more than a mere desire to avoid the

discomfort and unpleasantness that always accompany an unpopular view.

Yes I'll agree the Supreme Court has sided with those who peaceably and in a non

disruptive manner seek to express a point of view. And even if their students

but it doesn't seem to me that's much of a revolution. Didn't someone once say

out of the mouths of babes.

PROFESSOR JOSEPH R. Julan associate dean of the University of Michigan Law School

as presented law in the new recorded by the University of Michigan

Broadcasting Service. This is the national educational radio

network.