College Online Cources

The state Board of Education, in its first full meeting with a majority of members appointed by Gov. Jerry Brown, moved Wednesday to put the brakes on a landmark law that gives parents the right to force major reforms at low-performing schools.

The board took no action on proposed regulations to implement the law but instead will set up a working group to help determine the procedures. The panel will include those who had complained that the previous board was rushing the process without sufficiently considering their input. The board will reconsider the issue in March.

“We believe all parties involved in public schools should have a say before critical decisions are made,” said Richard Zeiger, chief deputy superintendent of public instruction.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0210-parent-law-20110210,0,6546559.story

In one week, roughly two dozen students from Marquette University Law School and the University of Wisconsin Law School will return to America bringing with them many fond memories of Giessen, Germany, their jet-lagged bodies, and an inexplicable taste for beer mixed with coca-cola.  In recognition of this fact, this week’s “Best of the Blogs” features an international law edition.

What is the status of a Declaration of Independence under international law, and must the nations of the world respect the self-proclaimed independence of a break-away state?  That is the question that the International Court of Justice faced when it decided that Kosovo’s Declaration of Independence was legal.  Professor Christian Tams of the University of Glasgow discusses the ICJ’s ruling in the Kosovo Opinion and finds the criticism that many scholars leveled at the world court to be unwarranted.  In this post on the Blog of the European Journal of International Law, Professor Tams ties the ICJ’s rather lukewarm endorsement of a right to declare independence to the uncertain status of seccession under international law.  Given the manner in which international law has neglected the issue, it is doubtful that the ICJ could have gone much further to support a right of self-determination than it did.

The confirmation hearings for (now) Justice Elena Kagan raised the issue of the use of international law as a tool for interpreting the United States Constitution, and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg gave a speech on the topic earlier this month that received some media attention.  Over at the blog Opinio Juris, Duncan Hollis summarizes Justice Ginsburg’s defense of the practice.  He notes her references to historical appeals to the use of international law as an interpretive guide, by Alexander Hamilton and John Marshall among others.  He also underscores Justice Ginsburg’s strong personal endorsement of the practice.  However, what interests him the most is that Justice Ginsburg includes legal blogs among the sources of international law that judges in the United States should feel free to consult!  You can read his post here.

The esoteric question of the interaction of international law with domestic law in the United States is given a concrete application in a recent post by Professor Paul Stephan of the University of Virginia Law School.  In this post, he examines the Supreme Court’s recent opinion in Abbott v. Abbott.   In interpreting the scope of t

Read more…