Education Law

Would Teachers Read the Law If It Was Available?

Listened to a great podcast from the Berkman Center on open access law. Specifically, it was an interview with Carl Malamud, of public.resource.org fame, on his and other efforts to open up the law. They have a series of upcoming discussions at the nation's top law schools to work on this issue and he will be addressing Congress on the issue in the near future. 

Anyway, one of the main points Carl gave for people opposing open access efforts on the part of the government is that the public won't read the law anyway, and so it is not worth the cost to the government to put it out there. Better to let private companies (West, Lexis) pick up that cost and then charge a fee only to those people that really need access and thus are willing to pay (collectively over 10 billion dollars annually). Now, technologists like me usually scoff at such suggestions, but in this case I want to pause to give it a bit more thought, and specifically, to see whether you think teachers would use the law (statutes, cases, regulations, board policies, handbooks, 100% of everything) if it were available? And, if they were to read it, how would they use it? 

I personally have very mixed feelings on this having taught teachers and principals how to use the law for the past few years, but I am much more interested in your thoughts. 

Full post as published by Edjurist on March 01, 2010 (boomark / email).