Does art. 12(1) of the German Basic Law require students to be automatically graduated regardless of grades? In this post, it notes that art. 12(1) of the basic law (the constitution) says: All Germans shall have the right freely to choose their occupation or profession, their place of work and their place of training. The practice of an occupation or profession may be regulated by or pursuant to a law. Has art. 12(1) been interpreted to require that all students should be automatically graduated regardless of grades?
No What it means is that no German can be forced by the government into a job, education or place of work. So for example, the Government cannot come and say &quot;we are short on railroad workers, the next 200 graduates of this school will report to Hamburg Station for training and become rail workers in Munich&quot;. That might be blindingly obvious today, but when this was written, the government that had just ceased to exist had heavily dictated who was allowed into which profession, not on personal qualification, but on things like faith, nationality, heritage and skin color. And other governments forming from the ashes right next door were indeed not capitalistic and their socialist central planning meant that they would direct at least parts of their workforce which jobs to take and sometimes even where. In contrast, in Western Germany, whether or not one becomes a rail worker, which company educates them and where they work in the end is their choice. Obviously choices are limited by reality. I can choose to be a railworker on an island in the North Sea, but I will be unemployed, because there is no rail line there and I won't get a permit to build my private one. I can choose to study philosophy, but if I cannot find an employer in need of philosophers, I will have to fall back on making money driving an Uber. I can choose to become a Pilot. But I will have a hard time finding a spare 747 to train on if I don't train with one of the big airlines. The may have their own, totally capitalistic goals. For example, contracts that say &quot;if we train you, you have to stay for X years and work for us or pay X amount of money&quot; are totally normal and legal in those businesses. And if their training center with the big 747 simulators is in city A, I can choose to train in city B, but I will obviously fail their program. So no, this law does not imply any kind of automatic success on a personal level. You still need to qualify for the training you want, be able to pay rent in the city you want to live in and find an employer that employs you, or customers to become a successful freelancer. Maybe you cannot do that for personal reasons. But the government will not dictate instead. You are then free to choose the next alternative.
The Fifth and Sixth Amendments are about civil and criminal court proceedings. They do not apply to a university's internal disciplinary procedures, which are the subject of the Dear Colleague letter. Note for example the text of the Fifth Amendment: ... or be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law. A university's disciplinary procedures do not deprive anyone of their life, liberty, or property. Typically, they only decide whether to suspend or expel the person as a student at the university, or apply other academic punishments (failing grades, marks on transcript, etc). I don't think there needs to be any law "affirming" this. Rather, there is simply no law that requires universities to use Fifth / Sixth amendment standards in their internal disciplinary procedures.
I can't find any law that would prevent an employer from requiring this. Under current Florida law, an employer can even demand passwords and access to an employee's social media accounts. A bill was proposed to prohibit this, but it hasn't passed. Generally, an employer can require anything they want as a condition of employment, as long as it is not illegal. Florida has at-will employment so the employer could certainly fire the employee if they don't comply.
It is the duty of the witness to give the testimony, no matter what their nationality is. As a witness, a German citizen is not different from a French, Uruguayan, or even a stateless. The only letter the judge will usually give them in addition to a verbal thanks is a formal letter recognizing that they have, on suchandsuch day(s), been called as a witness to the court and appeared. This is usually given to any witness and pretty much a form. It does serve as evidence for example in cases of absence from work - and you are entitled to the losses you incurred for appearing in court if you formally request them. It isn't forbidden to request a different letter from a judge, but they might not give such an extraordinary letter of appreciation, because that might taint the case: it could raise the question if the testimony was bought with or made to gain such a letter.
A teacher could not instruct students in how to build explosives for use in Federal crimes: It shall be unlawful for any person to teach or demonstrate the making or use of an explosive, a destructive device, or a weapon of mass destruction [...] with the intent that the teaching, demonstration, or information be used for, or in furtherance of, an activity that constitutes a Federal crime of violence (source) This Federal statute creates a law preventing the teaching (in any context, including schools) of bombmaking for the purpose of committing a federal crime. So &quot;bombmaking&quot; is one subject that cannot be taught, although I don't think that there have been any prosecutions of regular K12 teachers under this law.
If the school is a private school, then definitely yes: the school can also mandate clothing and grooming standards, and so forth – attending private school is optional, and they can even require the parents to provide the computer. (Mandatory) public schools have less power, but they still have the right to require students to do things that the parents do not like. For example, a parent might not like the particular history curriculum, or the might not like the fact that the child has to study music, but that is a power granted to public school districts. If the requirement were &quot;unreasonable&quot; in some sense, parental prerogative might win out over the school's rational of educational necessity. But it is no more unreasonable to require a student to learn how to use a computer that it is to require them to learn how to read a book. You might argue that reading is &quot;more necessary&quot; than developing computer skills, but the school district's curricular judgment is placed above that of a parent, so you would have to establish that giving a child access to a computer is objectively unreasonable.
Almost no constitutional right, for the most part, applies or gives rise to an all-encompassing right at all times. Schools can determine that certain times are off limits as activity during those times may interrupt the environment most conducive to learning, or for other articulable reasons; this is fine so long as it is applied evenly. Schools may say you may not hand out literature at certain times, only before or after classes, weekends, or put limits on the place or manner of distribution. There are examples of this premise that exist, pertaining to nearly every right, otherwise considered absolute. This is no different than the principle that while Americans enjoy the right to free speech, not all speech is protected at all times, or that the right to bear arms does not apply to all people, places, or environs.
There isn't to the best of my knowledge, any single document that tells courts to follow precedant or when and how to do so. Each State, and the Federal government, has a set of court rules of procedure. These will indicate, among many other things, the form that should be used in citing previous cases, but that is about form, not content -- about how to cite a case, not about when a court should or should not cite one. Some precedents are what are called persuasive. These are from other court systems: say a different state, or even another country. These also include rulings from other courts at the same level, say from a different district, or even from lower courts. Other precedents are binding. These are from a superior court to the one where the case is cited. In a state's lower court, rulings of that state's supream court are binding. In Federal district courts, rulings of the Court of Appeals for the same Circuit, and of the US Supreme Court are binding. In Federal appeals courts, rulings of the US Supreme Court are binding. They are also binding in state courts on matters where the US constitution is involved, or where Federal law supersedes state law. Prior rulings of the same court are strongly persuasive, but not strictly binding -- a court can overrule its own precedents when it thinks the law or justice requires this, although most courts are reluctant to do so. Or more often it can distinguish a previous ruling, saying, in effect: "that previous ruling is still valid, but this is a different case in such and such a specific way, so the result is different". Students in law school spend a good deal of time learning how precedents are cited, and how they should be used, learning what sorts of things are controlled by precedents, and how to find the precedents that apply to a particular case. When they become lawyers and then judges, they taken this body of learning with them, and use it in writing decisions, and opinions that explain those decisions. New law from the legislature can reverse previous court decisions, except in the case of decisions interpreting the constitution (federal or state). Amendments can change the constitution. Judges must adapt to such changes in the law. To a significant extent our system of precedent is a matter of tradition, going back largely to the common-law courts of England, although it has been modified by specific legislation in many ways, as well as by more recent court decision and practice. It is passed on in law schools, in legal apprenticeships of various kinds, and in individual court decisions.