Our Roles
By Nancy H. Rogers

What we do as legal educators matters. That is the premise of the critiques and the controversies that will command center stage at each of the three plenary sessions which begin the Annual Meeting.

“The calling of legal educators is a high one,” says the new Carnegie Foundation report on legal education.1 “[It is] to prepare future professionals with enough understanding, skill and judgment to support the vast and complicated system of law needed to sustain the United States as a free society worthy of its citizens’ loyalty; that is, to uphold the vital values of freedom with equity and extend these values into situations as yet unknown but continuous with the best aspirations of our past.” The Carnegie report levels deep and thoughtful criticism at current pedagogy. Given the importance of our role as legal educators, it is no surprise that the AALS Curriculum Committee notes in the description of the first plenary a “growing sense among legal educators that it is time to re-think legal education.” With such strong reasons to get it right, we are willing to contemplate fundamental change in pedagogy.

“[U]niversities, and, in particular, law schools, represent the training ground for a large number of our Nation’s leaders,” wrote Justice Sandra Day O’Connor in Grutter v. Bollinger.2 “Individuals with law degrees occupy roughly half of the state governorships, more than half of the seats in the United States Senate, and more than a third of the seats in the United States house of Representative.”3 She added, “In order to cultivate a set of leaders with legitimacy in the eyes of the citizenry, it is necessary that the path to leadership be visibly open to talented and qualified individuals of every race and ethnicity.”4 A new plenary (added after the first Annual Meeting brochure was printed) will focus on the continuing validity of Grutter and other rulings on race after the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Seattle and Louisville school cases.5 Expect five different views (panelists are Kim Crenshaw, Goodwin Liu, Charles Ogletree, john powell, and Reva Siegel). Because Justice O’Connor is right in her assertion that what we do in legal education related to racial and ethnic diversity has a deep effect on the nation, we have compelling reasons to plan wisely in this area of our endeavors.

Some bloggers, or “blawgers” as some blogging law professors call themselves, argue that the shorter, more accessible, and timely on-line publications will be more useful to decision makers than traditional publications. Blawgers may view on-line work as responsive to the critique, made by U.S. Court of Appeals Harry T. Edwards, for example, that “too many social issues are resolved without the needed input from the academic lawyer.”6 As the third plenary panelists discuss what on-line writings should be “counted” as scholarship, as opposed to “a bugged water cooler,”7the premise is the importance, or at least potential importance, of our scholarship to the development of law. We need to decide what forms of scholarship should be encouraged; it matters.

The critiques and the controversies of the past year underscore the significance of our role. In the busy days that mark the beginning of an academic year, it is easy to lose sight of the fact that what we do really matters -- to our students, to their future clients, to the system of justice, and to the nation. There is urgency to our joint task of getting it right.

i William M. Sullivan et al., Educating Lawyers: Preparation for the Profession of Law 202 (The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching 2007). The author expresses appreciation to Robika Garner for her research assistance on this column.
ii 529 U.S. 306, 332 (2003).
iii Id., citing Brief for Association of American Law Schools as Amicus Curiae.
iv. Id.
v Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1, 127 S. Ct. 2738 (2007).
vi Douglas Berman, Scholarship in Action: The Power, Possibilities, and Pitfalls for Law Professor Blogs, 84 Washington University in St. Louis Law Review (forthcoming, 2007), quoting Judge Edwards. Available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=898174, p. 7. See also Lawrence Solum, Blogging and the Transformation of Legal Scholarship, Washington University in Sty. Louis Law Review (forthcoming 2007). Available at http://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=898168.
vii Kate Litvak, “Blog as a Bugged Water Cooler,” 84 Washington University in St. Louis Law Review (forthcoming, 2007). Available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=898186