Here are some resources I’ve found helpful in teaching courses related to higher education law. I plan to keep adding to these resources so please check in regularly if you find these resources helpful.

Recordings of Oral Arguments

I’ve found that students often enjoy listening to parts of oral arguments and it helps to deepen their learning. Oyez is a really helpful site for information about the U.S. Supreme Court, and I especially find the oral arguments with the running transcripts a helpful resource. It’s a great for students to be able to listen to some of the foundational legal decisions that have involved higher education.

Some state courts maintain recordings for their oral arguments, and I especially have enjoyed using these, as they tend to include both audio and video. For instance, you can search a webcast library for the California Supreme Court. To give an example, Rosen v. Regents of the Univ. of California was an important case involving when a university could be held liable for violence by one student against another student. My students have very much enjoyed listening to selections from the oral arguments in this case. For another example, I often use Nova Southeastern Univ. v. Gross in teaching about potential institutional liability, and the oral argument from the Florida Supreme Court is available.

Sometimes the search function isn’t the most intuitive for these court websites, so the more information you have about the case can be helpful. So, when you have a state case that you want to cover in a class, check to see if there is a recording of the oral argument!

An Informal and Non-Exhaustive List of Some Helpful Sites

The Legal Information Institution (LII) out of Cornell Law School is a really helpful place for information related to legal resources.

While focused on higher education generally, The Chronicle of Higher Education (it does have a paywall), Inside Higher Ed, and Higher Ed Dive provide consistent coverages of legal issues involving colleges and universities. It has a P-12 focus, but Education Week has a Law & Courts section, and Mark Walsh provides some really nice coverage, especially of the U.S. Supreme Court. The Student Press Law Center has some nice materials. The Civil Rights Project at UCLA has some outstanding research and materials.

With Google Scholar, you can search for articles but also legal cases, and Google Scholar is an easy way for students to do an initial search of case or to locate cases with citation.

For issues dealing with free speech (including academic freedom), the University of California Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement, PEN America, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) provide information and materials that can be helpful in engaging students.

My Syllabus

Most of my students are not in law school, so through the years I’ve tended to pare down items on my syllabus to focus conversation and encourage deeper discussion and also to try and respond to the interests of students and legal developments that are occurring. I always find it is a struggle to balance breadth of coverage with depth in an introductory higher education law course. If helpful, here is the syllabus that I used in a recent higher education law course at the University of Kentucky.