Goodbye Mr. Chips: Student Participation in Law School Decision-Making
AS politics and ideology come to the universities of America, it becomes increasingly difficult to define such oft-heard slogans as "student rights" or "student participation" or "democracy on the campus." Defining the student's role on campus is as elusive as discerning the real politics of the Vicar of Bray.' One approach is to define these concepts through litigation. We are, as de Tocqueville reminded us long ago, a people given to clothing such questions in legal garb and asking courts for the answers. In the decade following the Fifth Circuit's landmark decision in Dixon v. Alabama Board of Education, a staggering body of case law has accumulated regarding student rights and student responsibilities, especially in areas of procedural rights in disciplinary proceedings and freedom of expression on campus.