Central State Univ. v. American Assn. of Univ. Professors, Central State Univ. Chapter, 526 U.S. 124, 7 (1999) (per curiam)

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130

CENTRAL STATE UNIV. v. AMERICAN ASSN. OF UNIV. PROFESSORS, CENTRAL STATE UNIV. CHAPTER

Stevens, J., dissenting

Justice Stevens, dissenting.

While surveying the flood of law reviews that crosses my desk, I have sometimes wondered whether law professors have any time to spend teaching their students about the law. Apparently, a majority of the legislators in Ohio had a similar reaction to the work product of faculty members in Ohio's several state universities. By enacting Ohio Rev. Code Ann. § 3345.45 (1997), the legislators decided to do something about what they perceived to be a problem that neither the State Board of Regents nor the trustees of those universities could solve for themselves. Section 3345.45 directs that board and those trustees to develop standards and policies for instructional workloads for university faculty members. It provides that faculty members of public universities, unlike any other group of public employees, may not engage in collective bargaining about their workload.

How the intellectually gifted citizens of Ohio who have selected teaching as their profession shall allocate their professional endeavors between research and teaching is a matter of great importance to themselves, to their students, and to the consumers of their scholarly writing. Who shall decide how the balance between research and teaching shall be struck presents a similarly important question.

Prior to § 3345.45, the faculty members' freedom to make such decisions was constrained only by the teaching or research assignments imposed by their superiors in the educational establishment. By its enactment of § 3345.45, the Ohio General Assembly has asserted an interest in playing a role in making these decisions. As a result of the filing of this lawsuit, first the Ohio courts and now this Court have also participated in this decisional process.

Buried beneath the legal arguments advanced in this case lies a debate over academic freedom. In my judgment the relevant sources of constraint on that freedom are (1) the self-discipline of the teacher, (2) her faculty or department supervisors, (3) the trustees of the university where she

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