Teaching Kids to Think

So, I have been cruising all over the southern Midwest the last couple days and while on my adventures I picked up an audio copy of Fareed Zakaria's book, The Post-American World. Fabulous read (or listen in my case). Packed with information (and cites - it was almost scholarly!) on China, India, the EU, British History, ... oh, yeah, and the U.S.

The book did not touch on education much, with one key exception. Zakaria makes the point, one in which I agree, that the place where America still holds its greatest advantage over the rest of the world is in its schools. Harvard, Stanford, Michigan, Western Kentucky, Kaskaskia Community College, Pinebluff High School, Shenandoah Elementary, White Plains Pre-School and the hundreds of thousands of other institutions of learning spread from the tip of Maine to the shores of Hawaii.

The American System of Education is Unrivaled. Period. There is no large country within shouting distance.

Zakaria's central and most important point is that in the rest of the world, kids are taught to take tests - and kids excel at taking tests. But in America, which often tests lower than other countries, kids are taught to think. Those are two very different skills that produce two very different sets of outcomes for a society. America's advantage is that we are not bound by tests. We realize the value in giving kids their own voice, their own personality, and giving them the space to grow on their own. There is a reason that the rest of the world sends its best talent to American Universities. The kind of education in thinking they can get in American Universities is not available anywhere else. Heck, the kind of education they can get, period, is not available anywhere else. 

Contrast that central, powerful, and strategic finding with today's test-driven mania within education. As educators, maybe we need to THINK a bit more for ourselves about how instead of simply reacting to being 15th or so on any given test-driven measurement, we can instead be focusing on what we do well ... teaching kids how to think for themselves.

We are a country of thinkers and doers and innovators and radicals and weirdos ... and I dare you to try to name a person in America that does not think for themselves and hold their own opinions and try out their own ideas. How does America thrive in the Post-American World? By not forgetting what it meant to be an American in the first place. We cannot allow our schools to take away our thinkers.

Update on Autism Remarks

Charles Fox has an update on the autism rant that outraged me last week. Apparently there has been quite a lot of backlash from the remarks and calls for the radio host to be fired. Radio stations and advertisers have dropped him already.

I absolutely 100% think the guy should be fired. This is no different than the Imus situation, just a different protected class that is being discriminated against and made fun of. Are we not as outraged as a society when people openly discriminate against and ridicule disabled children as we are when they do that to minority children? I would hope not, but here is the broadcasting company's response:

"[We are] satisfied that he did not mean any disrespect to autistic children or
their families but was instead reiterating his longstanding concerns on
public health issues."

Listen for yourself and decide what you think is appropriate.

Friday Snippets: 07/25/08 - The Candidates and Special Education

The transition has begun to the new site. I worked on
building it some this week and it is starting to take shape quite
nicely. I hope to have it up an running by about the middle of next
month - the tentative logo is below.

Also, I have new contact information, including a new e-mail, which you can find here.





Anyway, to the snippets.

School finance lawsuit goes forward in Alabama challenging its property tax system.

Meanwhile, a hearing on the school funding suit in Georgia took place this week.

Schools are being used as a pawn in the California same sex marriage debate.

Parents like single gender classes in SC so there is going to be more of it (but it doesn't make them constitutional).

Also, perhaps school finance reform in SC as well.

Colorado Christian University (where I lived in their apartments once and where the Morning Star Center was founded) won a federal financing decision against the State of Colorado.

They plan to anoint a new flagship
in Texas. I like their style and I wish other states would follow suit
- Illinois, for instance, could use a second flagship (Go SIU!). 

N.Y. school attorneys are still being punished for the scandal. Five more this week.

They are voting for more paddling in Georgia.

They are still negotiating in Hawaii over teacher drug testing.

W.V. considering year-round schooling.

Bible course standards approved in Texas.



And around the Blogosphere this week:

The big news this week is that COPA was ruled unconstitutional by the 3rd Circuit. Mark W. has the details. I will try to read the case next week and give some thoughts.

Mark also has a Florida court requiring parental permission for pledge opt outs. And he thinks there may be some implications of the 4th Circuit court allowing non-denominational prayer at city meetings.

Mike Tully at the Gate has censorship of a student newspaper in San Diego.

Making waves this week was the social networking communications ban. I pretty much wholly agree with Scott McLeod at DI on the issue. 

Mitchell R. has some NY education department decisions that are worth a look. Parent unhappy with teacher. Joint custody residency.



Wrightslaw has "when the school says NO"



Finally, as Charles Fox notes, the candidates have not said much on disability issues (they will speak some to the issue this Saturday ).




So for your Friday Fun ... ASK THE CANDIDATE!! (photo credit: Time)

Jim
Gerl is planning to ask the candidates about Special Education Law. I
want to get 100% behind this idea because I really do feel like we
don't know much when it comes to special education from the candidates.




So, your Friday Fun assignment is to go to Jim's blog and leave a comment with your special education question(s) for the candidates. I plan to do so this afternoon.



And, after that as a reward, you can check out Lori Miller Fox's "You Know When You've Been a Parent of a Child with Special Needs too Long When ..." - Great Stuff Lori.

Google Document Link: Friday Snippets: 07/25/08 - The Candidates and Special Education

"That would have been the perfect class."

I know I have some education technology readers so I thought I would pass along the quote in the title, "that would have been the perfect class," which I heard yesterday from a second year principal that was reflecting on his leadership preparation experiences and the lack of learning technology tools.

The principal was reflecting on how he struggles to manage time and now is finding himself seeking out technology tools that could help him do things more efficiently. Since he is now finding some, he wondered why he was not told of these tools in his principal training.

Good question, I thought, but one that he did not get an answer to at that meeting.

Friday Snippets - 7/18/08 - Live from Lexington

First Snippets Live from Lexington:


The Arizona Attorney General is now becoming involved in the Voucher funding issues.



Anti-bullying law discussions continue in North Carolina (more).



Discussions continue on Florida's proposed plan to eliminate property taxes for schools.



Who knows if Louisiana's evolution law is constitutional.



More autism talk. 



A group is seeking to rewrite the S.C. Constitution education clause to mandate that schools provide a high quality education.



Another major teacher strike in the UK - this time teaching assistants and support staff.





Couple ed. leadership stories ...

Education leaders put the onus for school improvement on principals in Arkansas.

New Jersey is reviewing some school administrator's administrative licenses suspecting they came from diploma mills.





Around the ed. law blogosphere:



Jen Weissman has Evan Bayh on Education.



Karl Romberger is in favor of a free agent market for teachers.



Last week, Wrightslaw gave the special education law blog five stars, and it has really seemed to stimulate Charlie Fox who this week has Epilepsy resources, the delicate balance of discipline, and teacher speech issue for speaking out on IDEA issues in her school.  



Jim Gerl has the difference between 2 and 1 tier due process systems.



Mitchell R. has some advice for legal bloggers and possibly getting picked up by Lexis and Westlaw.



Title IX blog has the Office of Civil Rights not buying an attempt to exempt some high schools from Title IX. 





And for your Friday Fun:

Think you know movie titles? Give this game a spin. Enter
a letter to guess the title (I failed my first 5 tries but then got
better quickly).

Google Document Link: Friday Snippets - 7/18/08

Is Autism the next ADHD?

One of the things that happens in a new town is that you search for new radio stations. Personally, I prefer, in order, (1) an NPR station, (2) an AM News station, (3) a sports radio station, (4) a country station and (5) a folksy station that plays a little bluegrass. So far in Lexington I have 1, 3 and 4 done. So, today I was searching for an AM News station. Tonight I took a quick trip to Lowes still tuned to the AM station I was trying out. On the way home I hear the announcer start a rant on how autism is not real.

Obviously I thought the speaker, some ultra conservative wacko, was kidding ... but no. The idiot was serious and went on to say that autistic children were just "fools" and that their parents didn't cure them of being fools like his daddy cured him (riiigght...wow). That America is diagnosing their children as autistic when the problem is really just a bunch of bad parents. - I wanted to spit into the radio in the hope it might come out the other side and hit this absolute ass of a human in the face. When he finished with his autism rant, I just turned it off and didn't even catch his name, which I regret, because I may have sent hate mail for the first time in my life. (If someone heard it and knows the guy, please let me know in the comments). No doubt the moron did not actually have an original thought of his own and just borrowed the thought from this guy in the National Review and took it to the extreme. 

Anyway, after the shock of this wore off, I considered for a minute all the new attention I have been hearing autism get lately. It has occured to me before that I am hearing more about autism lately than I have ever heard within a short period of time. It is beginning to remind me of the attention that ADHD got in the late 1990's and early 2000's. Even your average person on the street had an opinion on ADHD. Heck, I'll admit that at times I have thought there was an over diagnosis problem as I watched my friend in gradeschool go from an active, energetic student that made decent grades to a lethargic blob after they put him on the medicine. It clearly screwed up my friend for at least two years of grade school until they took him off the medicine and who knows what kind of lasting after effects that had on him. I know the medicine was messing with some of my high school students as well. 

But that is ADHD. Not Autism. If you have ever worked in a school it seems there is a fairly substantial difference in the diagnosis, yet the attention autism is getting lately is strangely familiar. We may be at the beginning of a new period where autism becomes a national issue and people begin to spew all kinds of uninformed nonsense that generally leads to chaos which in the end has a negative effect on children. So, those of us that have a say at all, we need to head this off early. I am going to stress autism awareness to my school administrators and I hope all of you in similar positions will take similar actions. 

Savana Redding Wins En Banc Appeal

In the case that has probably generated more posts on this site than any other (that's what happens when the plaintiff leaves a comment), Savana Redding has finally won her case against the school that strip searched her over missing Ibuprofen. The 9th Circuit, sitting En Banc, ruled 6-5 that the strip search was not reasonable under the 4th Amendment. (ABA Journal).

Common sense informs us that directing a thirteen-year-old girl to
remove her clothes, partially revealing her breasts and pelvic area,
for allegedly possessing ibuprofen, an infraction that poses an
imminent danger to no one, and which could be handled by keeping her in
the principal’s office until a parent arrived or simply sending her
home, was excessively intrusive.

Clearly, correct.

I have made my feelings known on this case before, and obviously I feel the Court reached the right outcome here, even if it did take an En Banc review. Now, barring review by the Supreme Court (see below), Savana can rest easily and feel that justice was finally served.

As to the effect on educational law, I do think this case will have an impact although it broke no new constitutional ground. The reasonableness standard and its two prongs (justified at its inception and reasonable in scope) continued to be the analysis used by the Court, but what this case does is find that the reasonableness standard is not a protection for school officials, as the dissent argues. School officials can (and do) violate this standard and when they do they are putting their schools at risk and should be appropriately punished. It is up to the judges to determine reasonableness under the Constitution; it is not something that should be left wholly at the administrator's discretion. 

Second, I know many ed. law professors that try to draw fine lines between strip searches and searches that are not strip searches but involve the removal of some, but not all, clothing. That should stop after this case. I would advise administrators to no longer engage in the removal of student clothing. The administrators in this case attempted to not go so far as a strip in this case by not fully removing her underwear, but the removal of the outer layers of clothing was enough to constitute a strip search. Unless in dire and/or highly justifiable circumstances, the removal of clothing should probably not be considered an option.

We may not have heard the last of this case, however. Because of the publicity, the Circuit, the outcome, and the period of time since T.L.O. was decided, I do give this case a 15-20% chance or so of being heard by the Supreme Court. But, either way, this case will continue to be referred to for years to come when discussing reasonable suspicion in schools.

A Billion Books

There are a billion books collectively in collegiate academic libraries in the U.S., according to this new report by NCES. A billion ... that is sort of hard to visualize, so I thought I would help out.

If, on average, each book weighs three quarters of a pound (probably more because libraries do mostly hardbacks) then the weight of the books in academic libraries in the U.S. is conservatively 750,000,000 lbs.

To put that in perspective, that is 975 times the weight of a fully loaded C-5 Galaxy, the Air Force's largest aircraft. How many is 975 ... well, there are 975 aircraft below in the image (right click to enlarge). The entire U.S. Airforce Fleet of C-5 Galaxies is 111.

No Friday Snippets this Week

This summer has been exhausting ... pretty much literally. As you all know by now I will be at the University of Kentucky in the fall (my name is listed now) and I am moving down to Lexington tomorrow, officially (that's right "I" - no movers - I will try to get some pics up at my homepage later of the misery). But, as much as I had hoped, not everything wrapped up cleanly here in Bloomington, IN at IU, either (no worries, it will all be fine, but I was hoping to be done by now). So, I am sort of having to live in 2 places at the moment ... and that comes at the expense of my other home away from home, the Web. Anyway, since I am a single man operation here, the Snippets are going to miss their first week since I started them at the beginning of March.

But, just to do something to keep the habit alive, I am going to let you get your own snippets by explaining the process I use to gather them every week.

The best place that I know to look for the snippet stories is Stateline, which is compiled by PEW. I go through all of their education stories each week and pick out the ones that relate to the law that have not already been picked up by one of the other ed. law bloggers. Also, I watch most of the major papers with bookmarks in Firefox. A lot of the major papers and news organizations these days have education RSS feeds, so I have aggregated some of those in my aggregator. I also run through some of the e-mail services I get such as ASCD Smartbrief, ECS E-Clips, NSBA Legal Clips, and some more. I also have bookmarked a lot of education video services, such as predefined searches of YouTube, CNN/ABC et al. education related news stories, NPR news, PBS' Newshour, AfterEd, and a few others. Plus I get e-mails from others around the country that I typically include if relevant. That's how I compile the news snippets.

The Ed. Law Blog roundup is a lot easier, but it takes just as long because everything is relevant. I just basically use my aggregator. It lets me know how long ago everyone posted their items, so I review everything that was posted this week if I have not read it already. From a quick review, it looks like there is a lot of good stuff this week in the ed. law blogosphere, so please check it all out. After I look at the standard 20 or so educational law specific blogs, depending on time, I hit up some of my other favorites outside of ed. law. Usually this includes ed. tech. blogs, ed. policy blogs, and some of the more famous legal blawgs.

Lastly, since I spend a lot of time on the Net, I note the things I found fun or interesting and use those for the Friday Snippets. When I didn't come across anything particularly fun that week, I go with a backup Seinfeld clip or music video.

Anyway, there you have it. My Friday Snippet procedures. If there are places I should be looking you did not see here, please let me know.

Now, off to take all the nails out of the wall (and my wife loves pictures, so there's a lot).

Lots of School Law Issues in Lexington

Since it became clear that I was moving to Lexington, I have added its paper to my daily reading list. As I have been reading it over the months, I have been noticing that Lexington has a lot of school law issues cropping up all the time. Today, for instance, a mother is suing a school over her daughter being bullied enough to send her to the hospital. This is not a ground-breaking legal issue and I have posted before on these types of lawsuits. But what is striking is the consistency of the cases coming out of Lexington. Now, perhaps it is just a great education beat reporter for the Herald-Leader, but either way it promises to be an interesting city to be in as an educational law instructor. As I use the blog as part of my teaching, you can expect to hear lots of interesting educational law stories from Lexington in the coming years.

Heads Up: Post-X Generation

The Washington Post has saw fit to change generations on us, just so you know. Generation X is entering their 30-40's now and the Millennials are now coming of age. I have seen this language around before, but the Washington Post is trying to put a definitive stamp on things. (Time on the issue, 1997).

Here's how the generational constellation breaks down:

Baby boomers, experts say, were born from 1943 up to 1960 (although the
U.S. Census extends the range to 1964) and are characterized as
idealists and moralists who fought over war, gender inequality and
race. Generation X, born between the early 1960s and the early '80s, is
described as economically conservative and disaffected, influenced by Ronald Reagan's presidency (and Michael J. Fox's
preppy Alex P. Keaton character in the television sitcom "Family
Ties"). Millennials, who experts say were born either in the late 1970s
or '80s to the early 2000s, are said to have grown up sheltered and are
risk-averse.

So, where does that leave me? Well, apparently I get to pick between Generation X and being a Millennial. I certainly feel very little connection to the Reagan era and I associate Michael J. Fox more with Spin City, but I am not sure if I am fine being classified as "sheltered" and "risk-averse" either. I certainly like the post-modern "X" label, but of course X doesn't say much about you either. I guess I don't really care for either label, frankly.

No word yet on what my son's generation will be called (born in 2006). Any ideas? Generation 2.0? Globalists? Seems like they are going to get a cool name.

Friday Snippets - 4/07/08 - New Laws Taking Effect

Got to love July 1. The start of a new year, everything is fresh and hopeful ... at least in school terms. But, July 1 is frequently when all the new laws affecting schools take effect also (more). Not to spoil your optimism.



We are not quite at the "just do whatever you want" point yet with NCLB, but we are getting closer.



An lawsuit over a critical intelligent design e-mail in Texas.



Louisiana is realizing how far out on a limb they went this year. More .
Louisiana certainly gets the award for the most conservatively oriented
new school policies this year. If there is such an award. The young Republican governor there pretty much is pushing forward on every front.



Meanwhile, New Orleans Recovery School District is cutting 180 jobs, 17 percent of its teachers`. 



A coalition to get more money for California's schools has taken to the airwaves.



Missouri is one of many states this year broadening online harassment laws. NY too.



U.S. Supreme Court denies Kansas undocumented worked tuition case.



In Michigan, always a leader in special ed. issues, a parent is trying to create a class of autistic children to go against Blue Cross, Blue Shield. 



West Virginia gets school bus time limits. 



Gotta watch those accountants ... (I am not referring to my wife who is an excellent accountant!).



Hawaii can't figure out who is going to pay for their teacher drug testing program.

Around the Ed. Law Blogosphere


Mark Walsh has all the big news of the week. Arizona and Maine vouchers okayed. The anti-abortion truck ruling. More from the LA Times. And some goodold Milwaukee union signs.



Jim Gerl is reflective on how far we have come since passage of EAHCA.



Charles Fox says we need more from the candidates
on where they stand on IDEIA & NCLB. He has a great point about
IDEIA - I have no idea where the candidates stand on that issue. I can
guess, but it would be nice to hear it from them.



Title IX blog has a school not liable for teacher harassment incident in South Dakota.



Connecticut Education Law Blog has a FOIA case there.



Wrights Law answers questions about school attorneys and walking out of due process hearings.



Jon Becker tells a great story about how Thurgood Marshall impacted his life.



Jen Weissman has Connecticut going to in-school suspensions mostly. This is probably a good idea. She also has Sen. Lieberman's (who is wildly unpopular now for backing McCain) education take.



Mitchell Rubinstien has a not so shocking anymore teacher speech case out of the Second Circuit. Complain about special ed = fired.



Check out this British Church/State case at Religion Clause. Interesting stuff.




OK, for your Friday Fun ...


What else? Enjoy. (If the fireworks are not playing and you want them to, just hit "preview.")

Google Document Link: Friday Snippets - 4/07/08 - New Laws Taking Effect

School Law Professors & Technology

Since I teach educational leaders, I thought I would participate in Leadership Day 2008, which was started over at Dangerously Irrelevant last year and is happening again this year. Leadership Day 2008 is supposed to focus on ways to help school leaders become more technologically literate so that they can better lead schools in the 21st Century. A few worthy activity, indeed.

So, my post today is going to focus on improving technology literacy in school leadership preparation programs, instead of directly on educational leaders themselves (for lots of posts directly on helping school leaders, see Dangerously Irrelevant where Scott will be doing a summation with lots of links). Leadership preparation programs, at least 90 some percent of them, are very traditionally oriented entities (why I know this). Granted, a few innovative programs are beginning to push the technology envelop seeking greater efficiency, but your traditional brick and mortar leadership preparation programs still dominate, and in those preparation programs technology literacy is not highly valued. It is valued a little, but mostly not enough to arise to any formal efforts to integrate technology literacy elements into the curriculum (again there are exceptions).

So, if our leadership preparation programs are not technologically literate, how can we expect our educational leaders to be? We show them what they should value in their careers during their preparation program and technological literacy is no where near the top of that list. So, how do we integrate more technological literacy into our preparation programs?

Well, here is an idea and what I am going to try to do over the next decade or so.

Technology issues are unlikely to get a privileged class of their own. The best technology can hope for in most programs is an elective, but in today's strictly controlled cohort models of leadership preparation, electives are largely out of favor. So, what class is in every leadership preparation program around the country where more technology can be integrated? ... Well, how about educational law? It's an unlikely place I know and probably not the one you were thinking of, but one where I think real progress can be made.

First, change comes easier to ed. lawyers. Last year, the First Amendment analysis was changed. The year before, teacher speech was entirely changed. Pretty much once a year, a fundamental change occurs in educational law and people that teach educational law thrive in that environment of constant change. We see it as our job to keep up with change.

Second, the Internet plays a bigger role in Ed. Law classes (at least good ones). While a lot of ed. leadership classes involve reading and discussing a book, the education law class necessarily relies on the latest cases, many of which can't be kept up to date in a textbook. My boss updates her textbook every 4 years or so, but it is still wildly out of date by year three. To fill in those gaps, we rely on Internet sources. In most of our educational law classes, we even teach students how to stay up to date with legal research. Also, most good ed. law classes use current events from the Internet. The latest local news story or NPR clip. 

Third, there is already a group of law scholars that recognize this change. It is no surprise that Scott McLeod & Jon Becker, who both run great technology oriented blogs, are both lawyers and are already writing an online law textbook. Throw in myself and people that recognize this change but have less of an Internet presence such as Kevin Brady, and there is a group that is already pushing the envelope.  

Anyway, I could go on, but you start adding this stuff up and I have come to the realization that we can use educational law courses to help school leaders become more technologically literate.

And, I realize I have a large role to play in this. Part of the reason for the Edjurist redesign is so that I can work off a site where I can publish Web 2.0 resources for educational law which can be freely used by school law instructors across the U.S. and world. Because the law is an ever changing entity, familiarity with blogs and other Web 2.0 devices are necessary for more than just personal learning and discussion. That kind of up to date familiarity is necessary to keep your school obeying the law and out of legal trouble. As I have already shown, there are already 15-20 education law blogs out there, many of which are state specific. As that number continues to increase, they should continue to increase their presence in educational law coursework. But, it is more than just blogs too. Vidcasts, forums, online hornbooks, etc. As people like myself begin to build and publicize these tools, we can encourage ed. law instructors across the U.S. to adopt these into their classes. Heck, maybe even some will be as crazy as me and do a YouTube assignment.

There are over 600 preparation programs across the U.S., each with an educational law course at least once a year. Consider if just 1/10 of those courses began to integrate more technology tools and helped train educational leaders in the use and function of those tools? That would be a fairly substantial change, but one I think is very possible within a decade. 

Snippets up in a bit.

Tags: leadershipshipday2008, schooltechleadership

School Standoff in Kansas City - Between School Districts

There is a standoff, literally, going on between Kansas City and Independence, Missouri School Districts. The Independence School District wants to take control of seven schools that were formally operated by the Kansas City School District. The KC School District seems to acknowledge that Independence has a right to take over the buildings, but because of an ongoing dispute between the districts over the cost of the school buildings owed to the Kansas City District and the lack of payment from Independence Schools, the doors were locked and security guards were posted to keep the Independence officials out of the buildings. Finally on Monday, a judge ruled that Independence has a right to enter the buildings. But, on Tuesday morning, the doors were still locked. 

Here is the Superintendent of Independence Schools after being locked out:

Things seem to be slowly resolving (video), but the Independence School District has still not been allowed to make repairs to the buildings, which is their intention before school starts.

Anyway, this whole thing is a bit embarrassing. If the school districts can't even get along and work together, what kind of public image is that sending these communities?

Ed. Law Professor Position - UIS

There is an Ed. Law assistant professor position at the University of Illinois at Springfield. Unlike some other Ed. Law professorship positions, this one does not necessarily require a Ph.D. - a J.D. and/or an Ed.D. may be enough so for any educational lawyers out there that have experience adjuncting at other universities, this may be an opportunity to get a full-time position at a growing university in the capital city of an important state.

As always, employers seeking to advertise educational law related positions can contact me about posting their position at the Edjurist. Hopefully there will be enough positions this coming fall to do a job board on the redesigned site.

The Changing Nature of Online Legal Research

I am working on a few different projects on educational law research. As mentioned before I am working on rebuilding the Edjurist. But, I am also working on a survey of educational law related folks and their online legal research needs with Kevin Brady, a professor at North Carolina State. Kevin found an article with some cool new online legal research tools that I wanted to pass along.

The New Tools:

Public.Resource.Org - The latest project from Carl Malamud, it seeks (eventually) to put all federal and state caselaw online for free (they already have 1.8 million pages up - all Supreme Court and Court of Appeals cases). Here is a link to the case law directory. You can use case citations to navigate (first by the volume number and then by the page number).

Public.Resource.Org doesn't seek to have the search power or additional features that West or Lexis have, but it wants to put the cases in a source where other folks (such as myself with the Edjurist) can begin to classify them and make sense of them. I found his letter to Thompson-West particularly interesting ... as is West's response that seems to admit that the actual text of the case in their database is not copyright protected. Presumably, if you could find a way to clean out all of West's workproduct in a case, you could then put that case online for free. Here is Tim Stanley (of Justia now, but a founder of Findlaw) on the project with some more information. Also WisBlawg. 

AltLaw - This is a searchable (advanced & boolean) database of over 750,000 cases. It is a joint project of Columbia Law and Colorado Law Schools. It covers all Supreme Court decisions as well as a good deal of Federal Appellate Court decisions from 1950 forward. It also has some cool features such as a Bluebook copy and paste generator as well as a Shepardizing feature where it links to all other cases in their database that cite the case. This is a tool we can be using in our educational leadership law classes right now.

PreCYdent - Here is the co-founder explaining it himself.

PreCydent has just short of a million case law opinions and over 50,000 statutes it searches. It offers a pretty good search page where you can search by title, jurisdiction, justice, date and citation and have your results ranked in different ways. You can also create a free account where it tracks your searches and allows users to upload new opinions and statutes. It is still in beta testing, but you can use it now. Again, this is another resource we can start using immediately in our classes.

There are other resources too, but I don't want to overwhelm you. The sense you should get, however, is that there are now large, increasingly coordinated efforts to get legal information online for free. That is an extremely positive development.