[Kriminal99]

What if someone filed a slander suit alleging that a university professor assigned a defamatory grade and that he was not qualified to assign any grade due to lack of expertise in the area of intelligence and education itself? The US supreme court fails to differentiate between opinion and fact, and a person making a poorly reasoned assessment of someone else cannot hide behind the claim it is opinion. You could argue that the professor was too stupid to accurately judge your ideas and/or lacked the awareness of the significance of intelligence that might have allowed him to be more careful in how he judged the ideas of others. Furthermore you could argue that this is characteristic of University professors in general given that there is no strict intelligence requirement or requirement for background in education or intelligence.

The very idea that someone can accurately evaluate your claims based solely on their participation of a social structure is wrong. Their expertise cannot be said to be of any claims that they disagree with, by virtue of the fact they disagree with them. Only the person who makes the claims can accurately concede that they are wrong, even if motivated by arguments by a professor. Otherwise the professor may be simply misinterpreting, and numerous studies have indicated that this may be more likely to occur if there is an intelligence differential regardless of social designations of expertise.

Also note that the assignment of grades was recently denied protection under the first amendment and it was argued that University departments could require grade changing for political reasons (like to stop a professor who flunks everyone).

[lawcat]

If such case is presented, the first thing the court will look at is whether the university has grade review procedures. If not they may send it back to university to review. They are not even going to deal with it.

If university reviews the grades, and the suit is filed then against university, it is a tall order to prove that the reviewing committee is acting to defame. Good luck with that.

Trust me, the US Supreme Court never fails to differentiate between opinion and fact. They do not try facts, it is their number 1 job. They only deal with opinions.

Your case describes professorial misconduct and there are channels at universities, not court, to deal with this. This is not to say that professorial misconduct can not rise to level of libel, but the first tribunal for that is the University.

[Fluxus]

H'm, sounds like someone thinks he's smarter than his prof.

It also sounds like said individual probably is not in law school.


As a student, you voluntarily agree to attend the university and abide by its policies. You implicitly accept the authority of the professor and the administration.

Most schools are accredited, which means that they are in fact recognized by the government as capable of setting standards.

You're also going to have a very hard time proving that a student has more knowledge and information than a college professor. If the many years of education and instruction don't indicate that the professor has sufficient expertise in a field, then why would a student who has had half a semester on that topic know any better?

By the way, the case you mention is Brown v. Armetti, decided in 2001. A grad student allegedly only attended 3 out of 15 classes, so the prof failed her. The university changed it to "incomplete," and the prof sued. This has nothing to do with any possible case where a student sues a professor.

I'm not seeing a genuine case here, more a massive sense of entitlement....

[Ken]

I suggest that readers note the disconnect between the thread title and the original post.