Tinkering with Stare Decisis in the Hazelwood Case

Abstract

Abstract In January of 1988, Justice White delivered the opinion of a 5–3 Supreme Court majority in Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier, upholding the right of public high school officials to maintain editorial control over a student newspaper (or any “school-sponsored expressive activity”) whenever such control is “reasonably related to legitimate pedagogical ends” (4082). Such a broad ruling seems a drastic departure from the earlier Tinker doctrine (Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, 1969) to the effect that student speech could not be prohibited unless it “materially and substantially interferes” with the effective functioning of a school (511). The thesis of this article is that the Hazelwood majority is guilty of intellectual dishonesty in its facile but inaccurate distinguishing of the Tinker facts from the Hazelwood facts. The Court, it will be argued, was inaccurate in two respects. First, it makes too much of the finding (not contested here) that the school newspaper ...