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MIT has an office of the general counsel and a baker's dozen of high qualified and experienced attorneys (not including supporting staff). It is possible they
by throwaway5752 7y ago
MIT has an office of the general counsel and a baker's dozen of high qualified and experienced attorneys (not including supporting staff).
It is possible they are violating the law, but it's probably worth assuming they aren't and understanding why. It may be related to the MA governor declaring a state of emergency a couple of hours ago.
- CydeWeys 7y agoPeople are too quick to try to apply law governing private parties to governments and other similar institutions. Schools and universities can do a lot of things differently than, say, a private company can.
- jimmaswell 7y agoWhy should they be above the law?
- CydeWeys 7y agoThey're not above the laws that apply to them.
- jimmaswell 7y agoThis is pure crony capitalism.
- CydeWeys 7y agoOn the contrary, universities as a whole are much older than modern capitalism. But anyway, I'm not interested in having a normative discussion as to whether there should be separate laws governing institutions of learning. The fact of the matter is that there are, and have been for a very long time, and that doesn't seem likely to change anytime soon. I'm not the one that made it that way and I don't care enough to argue it with you.
- kingbirdy 7y agoMIT is a private university, not public.
- CydeWeys 7y agoDoesn't matter. Universities generally are governed by specific laws.
- Gibbon1 7y agoYeah people make the mistake of thinking your can figure out the law based on deduction and first principals. You can't you need to be familiar with applicable case law. Thing to remember law predates science by about 3000 years.
- saagarjha 7y ago> Thing to remember law predates science by about 3000 years. Does it really?
- CydeWeys 7y agoYes it does. Science as we know it really only dates back to the enlightenment, whereas law dates back to at least 1754 BC (and likely earlier). More specifically, computer science only dates back a few decades (being generous, call it a century), and most of the people applying incorrect frameworks to law on this site are coming in with preconceived notions from that.
- xnyan 7y agoThat is, to a large degree, a distinction without a difference. Large US research universities are more similar than different in most aspects including status as legal entity and (perhaps more important in practice) in how society sees them.
- roywiggins 7y agoThey could always ask the state to declare a quarantine and boot everyone out. Quarantine powers in an emergency are extremely broad.