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Originally Posted by MysticCat
The language may have well made its way into that kind of usage. Frankly, that's irrelevant legally. The Constitution is a document designed to serve a specific purpose: to define the framework, powers and limits on powers of the government. The Bill of Rights serves a specific purpose as well: to enumerate certain individual rights that the government is required to respect. To say that private citizens or private institutions are required by the Constitution to respect those rights as well is more than taking the law further; it's a foundational shift in the nature of constitutional law.
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Indeed, i do understand that. And just based on the fact that I couldn't find any real discussions about the issue outside of FIRE's site suggests to me that some of the requirements tied in by receiving federal money are untested.
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think you may be right as to the practicalities of it. And I'm not suggesting that this means private institutions are able to "violate rights" willy-nilly. What I'm saying is that any obligation to respect individual rights must come in another way, such as when Congress makes it a crime to violate civil rights or attaches strings to receipt of federal funds. And when one seeks to have a private institution respect rights, we have to remember it's not constitutional rights that we're talking about.
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True, although, I note that the constitution is supposed to just be pointing out that these are rights that people have, not rights granted by the government or the constitution itself. While that document only prohibits the government's interference, in the process that does lay down at least the argument that interference with these rights is inappropriate.
/preaching to the choir here, I know, though let me know if my understanding is wrong oh ye of mysticalcatness
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As for FIRE, I don't know much about them either, though I guess I'll admit a natural skepticism. (And just because a school backed down doesn't mean FIRE was right. It can just as easily mean that the school decided the fight wasn't worth it.)
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Of course, I don't know whether FIRE was right or not, no ruling was made, but I was mostly using it in contrast to the idea that it was unequivocably acceptable for schools to break that rule. FIRE thinks there is, others obviously disagree. I suppose it just hasn't been tested in court thus far at the university/college level?