Expanding Knowledge and Serving Our Communities: Academic, Civil and International
by Judith C. Areen
The following is the Presidential Address of Judith Areen before the House of Representatives at the 2006 Annual Meeting in January.
Members of the House of Representatives, colleagues, friends and family: it is a great privilege to serve as President of the AALS, which for more than a century has worked to improve the legal profession through legal education.
Leadership of the Association is very much a shared enterprise, and I am fortunate to have the guidance of a superb Executive Committee and AALS staff. I extend my deepest thanks to each of you, particularly to Carl Monk, Elizabeth Patterson and Jane La Barbera.
I also want to thank the four Association presidents I have been honored to serve under for your leadership and friendship – Deborah Rhode, Greg Williams, Elliott Milstein and Bill Hines – and to extend a warm welcome to the incoming members of the Executive Committee: Reese Hansen, Robert Post and Nancy Rogers.
This is an Association that depends on the dedicated service of many volunteers. To all of our committee members, chairs, section leaders, speakers and the members of this House, I extend my personal thanks for your many contributions. The Association would not function without your good service.
For three years now, presidents of the AALS have focused on our scholarly mission. Mark Tushnet began the new emphasis in 2003 when he highlighted the role of the AALS as the learned society of the legal profession. In 2004, Gerald Torres celebrated engaged scholarship and the unique opportunity we have as legal scholars to engage the humanities generally as well as the social and natural sciences in the study of law, legal institutions and their role in creating and understanding the world we live in. For this past year, Bill Hines has encouraged empirical research, by reminding us that it is essential to inquire whether the law is based on correct assumptions about how the world works and people behave.
For 2006, I want to continue this important turn in the focus of the Association by emphasizing two themes—expansion of knowledge and serving our communities. First, expansion of knowledge. The phrase is meant to highlight the need for innovative scholarship that sets forth new ways of understanding legal issues, or develops new solutions to important problems. The call to expand knowledge is also intended to support faculty whose universities or legislatures do not value scholarship sufficiently. The problem may be more widespread than is generally recognized. Only last month, the Department of Education reported that faculty at doctoral-granting institutions in the United States spend on average just over one quarter of their working time on research. Faculty at other colleges and universities spend even less time—roughly 15%—on research. 1
Because scholarship is generally such an individual activity, it is not obvious how the AALS can best support you in expanding knowledge. One thing we can and should do is improve the quality of the sessions at the Annual Meeting by encouraging more substantive presentations. With this in mind, the Executive Committee in November adopted a new policy of giving priority in scheduling to sections that select speakers for their program at the Annual Meeting using peer review of their abstracts or papers. The goal of the change is to make the Meeting a more effective showcase for innovative research.
To the same end, I am pleased to announce that for the first time open slots will be made available at the 2007 Annual Meeting to interested groups of faculty who propose innovative programs. The goal is to encourage a more “bottoms up” process in which scholars collaborate to develop fresh ideas for a program at the Annual Meeting. I invite the members of our various subject matter discussion groups to take advantage of this new opportunity.
Some sections already have been using the Annual Meeting not only to present a program, but as a way to link promising junior scholars—identified through some sort of peer review process of their scholarship—to senior people in the field who are at other schools. I urge you to consider adoption of similar programs by the sections of which you are a member.
To further strengthen our support of research, the Executive Committee this year divided the former AALS Standing Committee on Curriculum and Research into two separate committees, in recognition of the importance of both functions. The new Committee on Curriculum is working to identify innovative reform efforts underway at member schools, and to provide information about them to all members of the Association. The new Committee on Research is focusing on ways to encourage more and stronger scholarship on legal education and on the profession. Again, suggestions for topics on which you think more research is needed would be appreciated by the Committee.
But today I want to discuss more than our work as scholars. This past year, a year in which Hurricane Katrina decimated two law schools as part of the much larger devastation in the Gulf Coast, brought home as never before that a learned society cannot be an ivory tower. It is for this reason that I selected two related themes for 2006: expanding knowledge and serving our communities.
I was never more proud of the work of the Association and our member schools than in the post- Katrina period when, within three days, a web site hosted by the AALS was up and providing information to law students in the affected areas about schools they might visit for the fall, thanks in large part to extraordinary work by the AALS staff, under the leadership of Deputy Director Elizabeth Hayes Patterson.
In September alone, there were more than 38,000 hits on the web site. More than 162 member schools agreed to open places for law students displaced by the Hurricane to visit. All told, more than 987 students were placed at 136 different law schools this past semester.
I also want to extend our appreciation to both the ABA Section on Legal Education and the Law School Admission Council for all they did in support of this effort and of the affected schools.
Special appreciation goes to two schools that did even more. The University of Houston Law Center hosted the Loyola University New Orleans School of Law for the entire fall semester, permitting them to run a parallel program using their facilities on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays. This was particularly important for the 1Ls who were not generally able to visit other law schools. Houston faculty and students also hosted students and faculty from Loyola in their own homes and apartments.
Second, the Hebert Law Center of Louisiana State University enrolled an extraordinary 168 2Ls and 3Ls from Tulane and Loyola as visiting students for the fall semester on a tuition free basis.
As admirable as these efforts were, I hope that we will draw inspiration from them to do even more, and on a regular basis. Service is too important to be reserved for times when there is a natural disaster. It is for this reason the Bylaws provide that the Association values, and expects its member schools to value, a faculty that not only is involved in the creation and dissemination of knowledge, but one that is “devoted to fostering justice and public service in the legal community.” 2
It has been eight years since former-President Deborah Rhode focused the AALS on pro bono and public service, and six since former-President Elliott Milstein focused on equal justice. The members of the Commission on Pro Bono and Public Service Opportunities in Law Schools appointed by President Rhode issued a major report and took steps to establish a new AALS Section on Pro Bono and Public Service Opportunities. The Equal Justice Project established by President Milstein held 19 colloquia at law schools across the nation to increase the involvement of law schools and law professors in improving the quality and quantity of legal services available to underserved people and groups.
I am pleased to report on more of the fruits of the work they launched. First, the AALS Section on Pro Bono and Public Service Opportunities is not merely established; it is flourishing. It serves now as an important gathering point for faculty and administrators committed to expanding pro bono work in law schools.
The Pro Bono Commission in its report Learning to Serve recommended that AALS member schools work with other organizations to encourage service by their students and graduates and featured the Public Service Law Network Worldwide (PSLawNet), the National Association for Law Placement (NALP), the National Association for Public Interest Law and the ABA Standing Committee on Pro Bono and Public Service. I join their recommendation, but want to take a moment to update you on some of the work of these organizations.
PSLawNet has become a part of NALP. Together, they now link 160 law schools (up from 120 when the Commission reported) and more than 12,000 law-related public service organizations to foster law student pro bono and community service.
Equal Justice Works (EJW), formerly the National Association for Public Interest Law, annually provides two-year fellowships to 50 recent law school graduates to work for traditionally under-served populations and causes, so that each year 100 fellows are in the field. This past year, EJW also established a Disaster Relief Program that will send up to nine experienced public interest lawyers to the Gulf Coast for two years, to work in the areas hardest hit by hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
The ABA has also acted. This past year it amended its standards for accreditation to provide for the first time that “A law school shall offer substantial opportunities for student participation in pro bono activities.” 3
The Pro Bono Commission in its Report devoted a section to the need to encourage pro bono work by faculty as well as by students. It celebrated the fact that in the 1930s it was Howard Law School faculty and students, including Thurgood Marshall, who helped to launch the civil rights movement.4 Although some law faculty content themselves with the thought that law teaching is a form of public service, more is expected. I also think this is a subject best taught by example. I therefore join the members of the Pro Bono Commission in recommending that AALS member schools each adopt a policy designed to encourage faculty pro bono work. To highlight this effort, I will ask the Section this year to collect and distribute model policies to all member schools.
We also need to do a better job of encouraging service by our students. In too many schools, more students enter with an interest in service than will follow through on graduation. We need to examine whether there is something in the current structure of legal education that is sapping their idealism. Support for the importance of pro bono work should be a more prominent part of what we teach. Esther Lardent leads the Pro Bono Institute, which has recruited scores of major law firms to join the pro bono challenge by committing to contribute annually to pro bono work at least three percent of the firm's total billable hours, or 60 hours per attorney. She recommends that faculty can expand knowledge of the importance of pro bono activities in the classroom by pointing out to students when a case being studied was handled on a pro bono basis. Schools also need to do more to offset the burden of high loan debt that limits the career choices of many of our graduates.
There are, fortunately, innovative examples of law school support for pro bono activities that need to be studied and replicated. To mention only a few: the Law School Consortium Project has expanded from four to 16 members schools. Each has a network to provide resources and assistance to solo and small-firm lawyers who serve low and moderate-income individuals and communities. The Access to Justice Institute at the University of Seattle, the Minnesota Justice Foundation, and the Center for Social Justice and Public Service at Santa Clara are also inspiring more students to work on behalf of the poor.
In deciding where to volunteer our time and energy, it is important to remember that legal academics are members of many communities. For this year, I have singled out three for special mention:
Serving the Academic Community
Frank Rhodes, the distinguished former president of Cornell University, has explained the importance of community in a university in this way:
Universities came into existence as communities designed to counteract the isolation of the solitary scholar. They reflected the conviction that growth of knowledge was only in part the result of individual insight and of personal discovery. Its testing, its refinement, its implications, and its applicability were largely the result of communal challenge, debate, and disputation. … It would be both naïve and unproductive to pine for a vanished, homogeneous community that can never return. But a new community, based on engagement, openness, and candor, can emerge without sacrificing any of the strengths the university now enjoys and without encouraging a superficial uniformity that has been outgrown.5
One very important service we can provide is to find ways to strengthen the academic community at our own schools and universities. This work should include redoubling our efforts to encourage diversity in our community, both diversity of viewpoint and inclusion of traditionally underrepresented minorities. Unfortunately, although many schools claim to want a diverse faculty—too often their efforts end once an offered appointment has been accepted. I commend to you the Report of this year's Committee on the Recruitment and Retention of Minority Law Teachers, which is available on the AALS web site. Among other things, the Report underscores the need for more effective mentoring of minority faculty, and a reduction of actions that contribute to a racially hostile environment.
During the past year there has also been a increased discussion of the ways in which the tenure system is hard on women, especially if they have children. We need to work with our schools and universities to improve the internal climate for all faculty.
We need diverse student bodies as well. In addition to race and gender, we need to pay attention to socioeconomic status. American has long prided itself on being a place where talent and hard work can overcome barriers to success, and education has been a key engine of that social mobility. Recent studies show, however, that our educational system is significantly stratified by class.6 Although we do not have enough data on legal education, the information obtained to date by the After the J.D.study confirms that there is a problem. For example, although in the general population about eight percent of men have some postgraduate work or a graduate or professional degree, 44 percent of the fathers of new lawyers entering the bar in 2000 did.
We also need to work on the relationship between faculty and administrators. Although administrators often perform such crucial functions as admissions, student counseling, and fundraising, they are nonetheless treated as second class citizens by some faculty members. In other schools, administrators view faculty as problems to be managed rather than colleagues in providing the best possible education to students.
I also encourage you to find ways to be good citizens not only in your own law schools and universities, but in the legal academy generally. The AALS needs you to serve as committee members and chairs, section leaders, speakers and in this House.
Serving the Civil Community
We share an obligation with all citizens to work to improve our civil community, whether at the local, state or national level. But we have an additional obligation to pursue justice, as explained in the AALS Statement of Good Practices:
The fact that a law professor's income does not depend on serving the interests of private clients permits a law professor to take positions on issues as to which practicing lawyers may be more inhibited. With that freedom from economic pressure goes an enhanced obligation to pursue individual and social justice.7
Winston Churchill characteristically put it more bluntly: We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give.
One of the best changes in the legal academy in my lifetime has been the growth of clinical legal education. Clinics offer an ideal way to link theory and practice for our students while contributing much needed legal services to our communities. Today, most law schools have come to appreciate the great value in enabling law students to work with actual clients on real legal problems.
One risk produced by the very success of clinical legal education, however, is that faculty are sometimes tempted to let clinical colleagues bear the entire burden of pursuing justice. But service is an obligation we all bear.
I was delighted to see that the Section on New Law Professors selected for its program this morning “Getting Involved: The Law Professor and Service to the Community and the Professions.”
The AALS Statement of Good Practices by Law Professors provides a good initial list of the variety of activities that can be undertaken to meet this obligation, including direct client contact, participating in the legal work of public interest organizations, lecturing in continuing education programs, educating public school pupils or other groups about the legal system, advising local, state and national government officials on legal issues, engaging in legislative drafting, and other law reform activities.
I encourage you to use this year to develop better ways of expanding the service work provided by all law faculty.
Serving the International Community
One of the most significant trends in the law and legal education in recent decades has been the dramatic growth in transnational law. Indeed President Hines, in his most recent AALS Newsletter column on the most important changes in legal education, selected globalization as the leading change in legal education of the past 25 years.
This past year, efforts that have been underway for more than five years bore fruit. Thanks largely to visionary leadership by Carol Monk, a new International Association of Law Schools (IALS) has been incorporated. The members of the new Association are being recruited from around the world. They have committed to the proposition that the quality of legal education in any society is improved when students learn about other cultures and legal systems and the diverse approaches to solving legal problems employed in those legal systems.
Certainly, the need for strengthening the rule of law to serve as an alternative to violence and war has never been more apparent. All AALS member schools have been invited to become charter members of the IALS, and more than 35 have already done so. That turns out to be more charter members than the AALS itself had when it was formed in 1900. I expect the number to grow considerably, moreover, before the opportunity to be a charter member ends in June of this year.
The Executive Committee of the AALS has also established a new Committee on International Cooperation. Its mission is to encourage global programs and curricular innovations at AALS member schools around the nation.
In retrospect, we can see that there was a major shift during the 20th century in which law schools moved from being primarily local or regional to being national in scope. The present moment holds out the opportunity of a second major transformation in legal education, one in which law schools adopt a more global perspective.
But moments of great change present risks as well as opportunities. Will there be adequate protection for human rights now that, according to Thomas Friedman, the world is flat? How can we as law faculty and our students and graduates contribute to greater human dignity in this changing environment? People depend on nation states for social justice and social welfare. Will nation states continue to provide these public goods in a world characterized by global competition? Law faculty and lawyers will help to shape the answers to these important questions.
Let me close by saying again what a great privilege it is to serve as President of this Association. With your continuing good service, 2006 should be a very good year for the AALS and for all our member schools.
Thank you.
1 National Center for Education Statistics, U.S. Dep't of Education, 2004 National Study of Postsecondary Faculty (NSOPF:04), Background Characteristics, Work Activities and compensation of Instructional Faculty and Staff, Table 19 (December 2005).
2 Bylaw of the Association of American Law Schools Sec. 6-1(b)(1).
3 ABA Standard 302 (b)(2).
4 AALS Commission on Pro Bono and Public Service Opportunities, Learning to Serve 11 (1999).
5 Frank H.T.Rhodes, The Creation of the Future: The Role of the American University 45, 47, (2001).
6 See generally William G. Bowen, Martin A. Kurzwell & Eugene M. Tobin, Equity and Excellence in American Higher Education (2005).
7 Statement of Good Practices by Law Professors in the Discharge of their Ethical and Professional Responsibilities, 2005 AALS Handbook 97.