Limitations Upon Legitimate Authority to Suspend and Expel K-12 Public School Students: A Moral Analysis Ladenson, Robert ethics high school punishment expulsion justice suspension This paper presents a moral analysis of the limitations upon legitimate authority to suspend and expel students in K-12 public schools. The paper has four sections. The first presents two case vignettes that pose difficult moral issues concerning suspensions and expulsions in K-12 public schools. The second section develops an analysis of the moral bases of a child’s right to receive a K-12 public education. Section three extends the analysis in section two, relating it specifically to limitations upon morally legitimate authority to suspend and expel students in K-12 public schools. The fourth section returns to the two case vignettes and discusses the moral issues they pose from the standpoint of the analysis developed in sections two and three. . The analysis, I hope, will benefit educators, parents, and the general public in helping to identify, clarify their understanding of, and gain insight into principles, which, I believe underlie any morally justifiable policy concerning K-12 public school suspensions and expulsions. Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions, IIT 2011 2011 Technical report typescript application/pdf islandora:10197 http://hdl.handle.net/10560/islandora:10197 CSEP / Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions Illinois Institute of Technology In Copyright http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/ Open Access