Law for Schoolmen

Dean Robert Hamilton of Wyoming University's College of Law has long been worried by school administrators' ignorance of the laws that especially concern them. Every year, he estimates, U.S. schools are involved in some 12,000 lawsuits costing more than $7,000,000. If only the schoolmen knew more law, Dean Hamilton concluded, many of those cases could be avoided.

Last month he decided to launch a one-man crusade to set the schoolmen straight. He began printing an experimental law letter, sending it out to selected officials across the U.S. Before he knew it, subscription money was pouring in--from teachers, school superintendents and state departments of education. Last week, as Dean Hamilton mailed out his sixth letter, he knew that his experiment was a success.

For $12 a year, subscribers get 26 letters filled with information about existing laws and those that are coming along. "At this time of year," one letter suggests, "you are doubtless beginning to think about teachers' contracts for next year." Then Lawyer Hamilton outlines some of the considerations to be kept in mind in drawing up contracts: state tenure laws, school codes, the authority of school boards. In two letters, Dean Hamilton explains the implications of the famed Vashti McCollum "released time" case (TIME, Sept. 24, 1945), proposes a plan of procedure for carrying on "released time" programs of religious teaching "without too great danger of legal involvement."

_ To show the pitfalls of the laws of liability, Hamilton cites the case of a New York teacher who was held responsible when a student suffered a cerebral hemorrhage during a routine boxing match. Another case involved a 15-year-old girl in Michigan who fell from a school wall and later died. Although the trial judge overruled the jury, "this case should give educational administrators pause," warns Dean Hamilton. "Note the amount--$10,000--the jury awarded the administrators of the girl's estate!"

The subjects Dean Hamilton hopes to cover in the future are endless--laws involving school transportation, the use of private residences for school purposes, saluting the flag, compulsory attendance, the rights of teachers to discipline their pupils, loyalty oaths, fraternities. "Administrators," says Hamilton, "need a sort of traffic light--red to warn them of danger spots, green to say go ahead. We are on our way to rescuing many."

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