In October, personal financial data -- including social security numbers, loan repayment histories and bank-routing numbers - of thousands of college students was exposed on the Department of Education's (ED) direct loan website. For seven minutes, anyone surfing the direct loan website could find personal information about students...

A recently-passed law in Missouri attempts to ban teachers from friending students on social network websites. According to the Amy Hestir Student Protection Act:

By January 1, 2012, every school district must develop a written policy concerning teacher-student communication and employee-student communications. Each policy must include appropriate...

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit recently upheld a school's discipline of a student for engaging in off-campus cyberbullying of another student. In Kowalski v. Berkeley County Schools, -- F.3d -- (4th Cir. July 27, 2011), a student (Kara Kowalski) created a MySpace profile called...

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit just issued two important decisions regarding a public school's power to discipline students for off-campus speech. Both cases were previously decided by Third Circuit panels (three judges from the court). The Third Circuit, acting en banc (the full court) vacated these...

The ABA Journal reports that the number of libel suits has been steadily dropping in the United States:

During his 30 years as a lawyer for the New York Times Co., George Freeman says, the "Gray Lady" faced four to five new libel suits per year, on average,...

The tragic suicide of Tyler Clementi has been raising awareness of the profound issue of privacy and young people. Two students, Dharun Ravi and Molly Wei, have been criminally charged with invasion of privacy for secretly recording Clementi's sexual activities in his dorm room and then disseminating the video on...