 PAPER CHASE / Law School News |
| JURIST >> PAPER CHASE >> Law School News |
| Law school and legal education news from JURIST's Paper Chase... |
New manual offers guidance for redrafting AA policies, following Michigan cases Adam Henry The Equal Justice Society, a national association of students, professors, and attorneys devoted to progressive causes, has released the final draft of its guide called Preserving Diversity in Higher Education: A Manual on Admissions Policies and Procedures After the University of Michigan Decisions [PDF]. As the name suggests, and as an ECJ press release confirms, the manual offers legal and practical guidance to admissions officers and administrators in redrafting their affirmative action policies to comply with last year's University of Michigan decisions, Gratz and Grutter [both PDF]. According to a report in today's New York Law Journal, the manual counsels admissions officers to adopt a broad view of diversity and to remain flexible in considering factors that would contribute to a diverse environment. Read the Journal's full report here. Elsewhere, in a busy day of law school news, the staff of Student Life commends the faculty of the Washington University in St. Louis School of Law for voting to join FAIR, the Forum of Academic and Institutional Rights, in its litigation challenging the Solomon Amendment. WUSTL's press release recommends Professor Chai Feldblum's website at the Georgetown University Law Center for a wealth of resources concerning the controversy. The Courier-Post reports today that the Rutgers School of Law-Camden is planning a $31 million building project to begin construction in summer 2005. The Providence Journal, meanwhile, reports that the Roger Williams University's Ralph R. Papitto School of Law, Rhode Island's only law school, is planning to phase out its evening program by 2008. Wrapping up, Stanford Law School announces the appointment of Professor Robert Daines of the New York University School of Law to an endowed chair in corporate law, and the Yale Daily News reports on Yale Law School students who have secured public interests jobs this summer with the school's generous financial support. 3:40 PM | | link to this post | latest Law School News
George Mason law dean to step down at year's end Adam Henry Dean Mark Grady of the George Mason University School of Law has announced plans to step down as GMU dean, effective August 15, in favor of a return to full time teaching duties. Grady has served as George Mason's law dean for seven years now, and has during that time presided over the school's meteoric ascent in US News's annual rankings, from 116 to (most recently) 38. See the school's news release concerning its position in the 2005 rankings. Today's Mason Gazette has the full story on Grady's plans here. Elsewhere, Professor Brian Leiter of the University of Texas School of Law offers a helpful summary today on his Leiter Reports blog of major law faculty moves made in the last year. The summary follows a preliminary list compiled and posted yesterday in preparation for a column on the year's ten most significant moves. Professor Leiter also reports today that Harvard Law School is looking to add experts in constitutional law to its already distinguished faculty, and to this end is entertaining several visiting professors of con law in the coming academic year. 5:07 PM | | link to this post | latest Law School News
Lessig offers book for free download, advances "free culture" Adam Henry Practicing what he preaches, Professor Lawrence Lessig of Stanford Law School has made his newest book available for free download [PDF] online. In Free Culture, Lessig decries current legal trends and argues for a rebalancing of copyright values that maximizes the Internet's creative and innovative potential. Relying on a Creative Commons license, he allows readers to download the book in its entirety and even make and distribute copies for noncommercial purposes, so long as they credit him as author. Professor Lawrence Solum of the University of San Diego School of Law has taken up the offer and fulfilled the book's intentions, offering "a sort of blogospheric book club" on his excellent Legal Theory Blog. Lessig tells the Stanford Daily today that in addition to contributing to the culture that he advocates, he expects online availability to increase sales of physical copies. In other law school news, Harvard Law School announces today that a team of HLS students took first place at the National Criminal Justice Trial Advocacy Competition in Chicago last weekend. The competition site offers a brief release. 3:07 PM | | link to this post | latest Law School News
Malibu Ken: Kenneth Starr named Pepperdine law dean Adam Henry As reported for JURIST's Paper Chase earlier Tuesday, former independent counsel Kenneth Starr has been named dean of the Pepperdine University School of Law, effective August 1. The school now offers a news release about the appointment. A graduate of the Duke University School of Law and a practicing attorney with Kirkland & Ellis in Washington, DC, Starr nevertheless has several ties to Pepperdine: he served as Straus Distinguished Visiting Professor in 1993, received an honorary doctor of laws degree in 1996, and has sat on the Board of Visitors since 1992. He was first offered the deanship in 1997 but declined in order to attend to his duties as independent counsel in the Whitewater investigation. Meanwhile, the Florida Coastal School of Law has gone lateral to hire its new dean, naming Dean Peter Goplerud [scroll down] of the Drake University Law School to its highest administrative post, effective June 30. Goplerud has co-written a casebook on sports law currently in its fifth edition, and is a career legal educator, as characterized in Jacksonville's Daily Record. Finally, the North Grounds Softball League at the University of Virginia School of Law congratulates two of its own, as UVA squads swept top honors in the regular and co-rec divisions of its annual law softball invitiational last weekend. NGSL has posted the final brackets from the double-elimination tournament at its site here. 12:57 PM | | link to this post | latest Law School News
Law schools respond to latest US News rankings Adam Henry Major movers in the 2005 US News and World Report rankings are responding in very different ways to their upward moves. The Washington University in St. Louis School of Law (20, up from 25 in 2004) takes the customary approach, embracing its rise in the rankings while acknowledging limits to the rankings' significance. See WUSTL's release here. Dean W.H. Knight, Jr. of the University of Washington School of Law (34, up from 45), however, claims no such victory in his column today. Instead, he cites measures in which UW must improve if it is to continue to improve its overall ranking. See Dean Knight's column here. Meanwhile, the University of Pittsburgh School of Law (47, up from 51) merely links readers of its website to the rankings, without comment. Finally, in a testament to the influence that the rankings enjoy, the Arizona State University College of Law (53, up from 59) has announced plans to increase its faculty by 25%, explicitly hoping to improve its student/teacher ratio and thus its overall ranking (the measure constitutes 3% of total score in the ranking methodology). See the Arizona Republic's full report here. In other law school news, Washington University in St. Louis announces its successful recruitment of Professors Sam Bagenstos and Margo Schlanger from Harvard Law School. The Touro College Jacob D. Fuchsberg Law Center, meanwhile, has named Professor Lawrence Raful of Creighton University School of Law as its new dean, according to the New York Law Journal. Elsewhere around the country: the San-Antonio Express-News reports on a new terrorism law research center inaugurated Friday at St. Mary's University School of Law; the Kansas City Star reports on a possible downtown move by the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law; the Charleston Business Journal takes stock of the first class of admits at the Charleston School of Law; and the Yale Daily News reports on a false bomb scare at Yale Law School on Saturday. 1:06 PM | | link to this post | latest Law School News Comments by Haloscan |
