Legal issues

Judge Samuel Alito, President Bush's new nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court, has not written many decisions that relate directly to higher education. But he has taken strong First Amendment stands in defending the rights of a student newspaper and in questioning anti-harassment rules at a public school.

Civil liberties group charges that university's policies are so broad that common jokes could get someone expelled.

Do professors at state colleges have different speech protections from other public employees? A court says No.

Don’t tell that to administrators at the numerous colleges that have opened or are contemplating new ones.

A few academic bloggers may soon learn the litigious way that what’s said in cyberspace doesn’t always stay there.

Boston companies charged with producing coursepacks for Northeastern and UMass without adequate permissions.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision in MGM Studios v. Grokster continues to reverberate in the world where music and technology collide, as another file sharing network popular with college students, i2hub, followed Grokster Monday in announcing that it would shut down.

But if recording industry officials think they have definitively won the battle over the free sharing of music and video, they are mistaken, many students -- and some campus experts -- say.

As students face expulsion for expressing anti-Bush views, free speech concerns surface.

Judge sides with college, but offers harsh criticism in case that has angered many black students.

The University of Wisconsin System's Board of Regents abided by state law in 2001 when it fired a tenured professor for alleged sexual harassment and other misconduct, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled Tuesday. While it largely sided with the university in the case of John Marder, the court sent the case back to a lower court to resolve one factual issue.