DUE PROCESS WINS A BATTLE AGAINST A UNIVERSITY’S KANGAROO COURT

Though federal judges tend to uphold a lot of unjust campus decisions in sex-assault cases, Judge Elizabeth Dillon, an Obama appointee, proved on December 23 that some campus procedures are just too outrageous to survive judicial review.

The judge’s due process ruling came in a case out of James Madison University. (You can read her opinion here.) After troubling appellate rulings in California(which approved a process one judge had compared to a kangaroo court) and in the 6th Circuit (where one judge suggested that military court martials represented an appropriate model for campus sexual assault cases), the Dillon ruling is important.

The James Madison case also illustrates the effects of an often- overlooked effect of the 2011 Dear Colleague letter—the requirement that colleges introduce allow accusers to appeal not-guilty findings. As in comparable cases at George Mason and the University of Michigan, at James Madison, this double-jeopardy principle created an additional layer of injustice. Indeed, in all other types of disciplinary cases at JMU, an accusing student can’t appeal a not-guilty finding.

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