The Circle School v. Pappert
Pennsylvania law mandates that all public, private, and parochial schools display the national flag in every classroom and provide for the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance or the national anthem at the beginning of each school day.
Like similar statutes in other states, the law allows private and parochial schools to opt out of its requirements on religious grounds, and gives students the option of refraining from participating in the recitation and saluting the national flag on religious or personal grounds. However, it also requires school supervising officials ...
State v. Nguyen
In this Oregon case, the parents appealed a judgment terminating their parental rights in their three-year-old son Matthew. They argued that the state failed to prove by clear and convincing evidence that they are unfit parents, that reintegration into their home is improbable within a reasonable time because they are unlikely to change, and that termination of their parental rights was in Matthew's best interest.
The TPR was filed after one of the parents inflicted serious abuse on Matthew's sibling, four-month old Martha, repeatedly breaking her limbs and fracturing ...
Adoptive Mother Abandons Children in Africa
In one of the more bizarre stories I've encountered, seven adopted American children, ages 8 to 17, were recently discovered in an African orphanage. The adoptive mother, Mercury Denise Liggins, had apparently left the children with a relative in Nigeria while she went to work for Haliburton in Iraq. After the children were discovered by a passing missionary, House Majority Speaker Tom DeLay, Senator John Cornyn and State Department officials intervened to return the children to Houston. The children, who were born and raised in Texas, were placed with Liggins by Houston ...
Doe v. Little Rock School District
This case required the court to decide whether the practice of the Little Rock School District that subjects secondary public school students to random, suspicionless searches of their persons and belongings by school officials is unconstitutional. The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals held that such searches violate the students' fourth amendment rights because they unreasonably invade their legitimate expectations of privacy.
Teenage Sex and Mandatory Minimums
There must be something in the water in Georgia. Yesterday, the Georgia Supreme Court wrestled with how mandatory minimum sentencing laws treat teenagers who are caught engaging in consensual sex.
In the case before the court, Marcus Dwayne Dixon, a black 18-year-old high school football player, was accused and acquitted of raping a white 15-year-old female classmate.
But Dixon was convicted of misdemeanor statutory rape and aggravated child molestation, one of the so-called "seven deadly sins" for which Georgia law requires at least a 10-year prison term.
A star ...
When Children Take the Stand
There is undoubtedly an increase in the number of children involved in the judicial system either as victims (there are 500,000 children in foster care all of whom were in court last year), perpetrators (there were 1 million court involved delinquents and status offenders in 1999), and witnesses in divorce, domestic violence and other civil cases.
One of the best books on child witnesses remains Anne Graffam Walker's Handbook On Questioning Children: A Linguistic perspective. Another good publication is Evidence in Child Abuse and Neglect Cases by John E.B. Myers.
Both ...