Hope From Legal Principles

• In Event: History, Hate, and Hope

Abstract

Understanding and applying principles of constitutional and educational law can provide a path towards hope for students, educators, administrators, parents, and other stakeholders in education. In Canada and the US, and other countries with our shared legal heritage, we have inherited the written and unwritten legal principles that support democracy and freedom. The separation of legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government ensures processes that promote the careful and thoughtful creation of laws, policies, and practices that govern our schools, and allow for the review of actions and decisions that affect everyone involved in education.

It is important to understand the laws that apply to education are meant offer a framework to support the purposes of education, not the other way around. The law must be seen to serve the public interest in education, including the needs of educational stakeholders. Just as the rules of a sport are designed to ensure fair play and a positive experience for players, coaches, officials, and spectators, education law must be understood as a means to ensure that everyone involved in education can fulfill their responsibilities, exercise their rights, and respect the rights of others in the pursuit of positive learning and working environments in education.

In Canada and the US, we enjoy constitutional and legal rights in such areas as expression, religion, and equality, along with protection from unfair decision-making, unreasonable invasion of privacy, and discrimination. With specific reference to racism, constitutional law offers protection to students, teachers, and parents from discriminatory action by government and government actors. Human rights legislation offers similar protection against racial discrimination by government and non-government actors.

Not only does the law offer protection from racial discrimination, but it also provides a framework for investigating and resolving disputes and controversies that arise from allegations or accusations of racism. For this reason, it is especially important to promote and encourage legal literacy among school leaders in particular but also among the wider community of education stakeholders so that everyone in education can enjoy equal benefits of the law.

Author

• Ken Brien, University of New Brunswick