In United States v. Loughner the Ninth Circuit will soon address the constitutionality of involuntarily medicating an incompetent pretrial defendant through a Harper order that could serve to render him competent to stand trial without the added procedural protection of a judicial hearing. Judicial support for applying Harper orders to pretrial defendants is likely to be used to justify Harper ...

Higher-education institutions may be skittish about the uncertainties associated with innovative uses of information technology to build learning communities. But a growing collection of external providers—mainly proprietary, for-profit institutions—are embracing them. A brief review of these external providers can yield several insights for higher education, allowing them to size up the compet...