If the marketplace of ideas provides the basis for our growth and self-determination as a society, college campuses are the factories in which those ideas are cultivated, tested, and manufactured. Equally important, they are often the chief mechanism by which individual students are given the tools to meaningfully participate in the political process, in civic and social institutions, and the ability to chart socially mobile and economically independent lives.
Yet federal courts have never recognized a student’s liberty interest in their education. Adopting a framework initially posited by Professor Matthew Shaw, this Note advocates that students retain a substantive due process property interest in a post-secondary education. Next, the Note addresses an equally compelling issue: once a student’s property interest in her education has been recognized, what procedural protection does a university owe her when adjudicating an allegation of some non-academic misconduct? The Note specifically argues in favor of an accused student’s limited right to cross-examination.
Applying existing theory and current caselaw, the solutions reconcile a student’s property interest under one single doctrinal framework and provide a uniform set of procedural rules universities should follow in determining whether the student’s interest in remaining in school should be forfeited. The Note provides both students and their universities with a more stable, more predictable procedure for vindicating individual student rights and protecting education institutions as a whole.
