- Series
- Law in the news
- Air Date
- 1969-03-19
- Duration
- 00:05:16
- Episode Description
- This program discusses the rights of students to express themseves in the face of school regulations.
- Series Description
- This series focuses on current news stories that relate to the law.
- Subject(s)
- Creator(s)
- University of Michigan (Producer)
- Contributors
- Julin, Joseph R. (Speaker)
- Genre(s)
- Geographic Region(s)
- regions
- Time Period
- 1961-1970
[00:06 - 00:10]
The National Educational ready o network presents a law in the news with Professor
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Joseph R. Julan associate dean of the University of Michigan Law School.
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It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of
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speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate. This has been the unmistakable holding of
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this court for almost 50 years with these words and others we will
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examine the United States Supreme Court. Speaking to Mr Justice Porthos
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upheld the right of certain Iowa school children to wear black armbands to class
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this in defiance of a school regulation which barred this means of publicizing
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objections to the Vietnam War. Dissenting justice black
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rights in undisguised disgust. This case wholly
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without constitutional reasons in my judgment he says Subject all the public
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schools in the country to the whims and caprices of their loudest Mollett. But maybe not their
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brightest students. I for one am not fully persuaded that school pupils are wise
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enough even with this court's expert help from Washington to run the twenty three
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thousand three hundred ninety school systems in our 50 states.
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Furthermore the dissenting justice continues. I deny that it has been the
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unmistakable holding of this court that students and teachers take with them into the
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schoolhouse constitutional right to freedom of speech or expression any
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more than they do when they enter the Congress or the Supreme Court. It is a myth.
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Justice Black says that any person has a constitutional right to say what he
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pleases where he pleases and when he pleases. Now
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some editorial comment has joined the Black dissent to the court's seeming expansion of the public
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school students freedom of expression. One respected editor puts it this
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way the liberties some students are taking with the freedoms they already have
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ought to indicate a move in the other direction. The editor continues what chance does a school
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have if it must prove that certain individuals were disruptive and that they infringed
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upon the rights of other students before it seeks to lay down the law for Pete's sake by that
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time the campus riot is almost over. But is this
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armband decision so revolutionary so unbelievable in a day and
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age of campus and even high school disruption. Does it really provide a battle
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flag or should I say a battle cry for the irrational radical Bihi but
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one or two percent or less of the student population. I just don't
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think so. The Des Moines school authorities promulgated a regulation against the
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armed barons but not against any other symbol of political or controversial
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significance. Apparently out of fear of what might happen.
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But in our system undifferentiated fear or apprehension of
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disturbance is not enough to overcome the right to freedom of expression.
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Sustaining this fundamental proposition Mr. Justice Fortis seeks to make clear what the court
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is not doing as he puts it. The problem presented did not
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relate to the regulation of the length of skirts or the type of clothing to hairstyle or
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deportment. It did not concern disruptive action or even
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group demonstrations. Rather the case before the court as the majority saw
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it involved direct primary First Amendment rights akin to pure
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speech. There was no evidence of the armband wearing students interfering
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or being about to interfere with the school's work or of collision with the rights of other
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students to be secure and to be let alone but weren't the school official
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acting so as to prevent the disruption which apparently they believe might occur. And if so
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did they not act as a reasonable man would under the circumstances. One of the circumstances being
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their obligation to maintain an environment suitable for uninterrupted learning by the students and
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teaching by the faculty not the other way around. Justice Black certainly
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thought so. In his descent he says the original idea of schools which I do not believe
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is yet abandoned as worthless or out of date was that children had not yet reached the point of
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experience and wisdom which enabled them to teach all of their elders.
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Justice for does however holds and perhaps this is the paragraph which school officials everywhere should carefully
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note. And now I quote the law on the subject as laid down by the United States Supreme
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Court. In order for the state in the person of school officials to justify
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prohibition of a particular expression of opinion it must be able to show that its
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action was caused by something more than a mere desire to avoid the
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discomfort and unpleasantness that always accompany an unpopular view.
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Yes I'll agree the Supreme Court has sided with those who peaceably and in a non
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disruptive manner seek to express a point of view. And even if their students
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but it doesn't seem to me that's much of a revolution. Didn't someone once say
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out of the mouths of babes.
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PROFESSOR JOSEPH R. Julan associate dean of the University of Michigan Law School
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as presented law in the new recorded by the University of Michigan
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Broadcasting Service. This is the national educational radio
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network.
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