The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a federal law known as the Solomon Amendment, which withholds funds from colleges and universities that deny access to military recruiters, infringes on the free-speech rights of the schools. Harvard Law School Dean Elena Kagan issued a statement available here explaining that the school will now bar military recruiters.

In a legal sense, there are a couple things to note here. First, the ruling won’t take effect for over 50 days, and the federal government will likely seek a stay of the mandate, followed by a review of the Supreme Court. So the ruling may never effect and Harvard won’t be able to ban them for at least a while, if at all. Second, Harvard Law School has always had (including now) the right to ban military recruiters from campus. It’s just that under the Solomon Amendment they have to forgo federal funding for doing so.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 30th, 2004 at 10:36 pm by Mystery Man and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.