ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights a few new legal concepts that have had an impact on all educational institutions in some fashion. It focuses on the basic rights and responsibilities of administrators, faculty, and students, the legal differences between private and public educational institutions, and the legal structure of educational systems. Openness and fairness are salient characteristics of the new legal concepts which affect trustees, superintendents, school board members, institutional administrators, faculty members, and other education officials. Legal bases for rights and responsibilities of persons in educational institutions stem from a number of clearly defined sources. The newness is the specific language in various statutes and court decisions recognizing and extending the legal definitions of honesty and justice. A class action is a legal procedure whereby a lawsuit may be filed against an institution or person by a plaintiff on behalf of a whole “class” of persons who have suffered the same injury.
