John Paul Stevens,
New Jersey v. T.L.O. — Concurrence-dissent
“ Justice Brandeis was both a great student and a great teacher. It was he who wrote:Our Government is the potent, the onmipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the Government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. ”
John Paul Stevens,
New Jersey v. T.L.O. — Concurrence-dissent
“ The Court's effort to establish a standard that is, at once, clear enough to allow searches to be upheld in nearly every case, and flexible enough to prohibit obviously unreasonable intrusions of young adults' privacy only creates uncertainty in the extent of its resolve to prohibit the latter. Moreover, the majority's application of its standard in this case — to permit a male administrator to rummage through the purse of a female high school student in order to obtain evidence that she was smoking [p382] in a bathroom — raises grave doubts in my mind whether its effort will be effective. ”
John Paul Stevens,
New Jersey v. T.L.O. — Concurrence-dissent
“ To the contrary, when minor violations are involved, there is every indication that the informal school disciplinary process, with only minimum requirements of due process, [18] can function effectively without the power to search for enough evidence to prove a criminal case. In arguing that teachers and school administrators need the power to search students based on a lessened standard, the United States as amicus curiae relies heavily on empirical evidence of a contemporary crisis of violence and unlawful behavior that is seriously undermining the process of education in American schools. ”
