Formation | 1900 |
---|---|
Type | Learned society |
Headquarters | Washington, D.C. |
Location |
|
Official language | English |
President | Austen Parrish (since January 2025) |
Executive Director and CEO | Kellye Y. Testy |
Key people | Danielle Conway Melanie D. Wilson |
Website | www |
The Association of American Law Schools (AALS), formed in 1900, is a non-profit organization of 175 law schools in the United States. [1] An additional 19 schools pay a fee to receive services but are not members. AALS incorporated as a 501(c)(3) non-profit educational organization in 1971. The association is a member of both the American Council on Education and the American Council of Learned Societies [2] its headquarters are in Washington, D.C.
In August 1905, a new quarterly law publication was announced in the annual meeting held in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Henry Wade Rogers, dean of Yale Law School served as the president and 25 law schools were represented. [3]
Austen Parrish, dean of University of California, Irvine School of Law, became president of AALS on January 11, 2025. The president-elect is Danielle Conway, dean of Penn State Dickinson Law, and Melanie D. Wilson, dean of Washington and Lee University School of Law, is the immediate past president. [4]
Kellye Y. Testy was named executive director and chief executive officer in January 2024 and started in the role in July 2024. [5] Prior to joining AALS, Testy served as president and CEO of Law School Admission Council, dean of University of Washington School of Law and dean of Seattle University School of Law. [6]
Judith Areen served as executive director and chief executive officer of AALS from 2014 to 2024. [7] Prior to coming to AALS, Areen was on the faculty of Georgetown University Law Center where she served as dean from 1989 to 2004 [8] and as interim dean in 2010. [9]
AALS hosts a number of events throughout the year. [10] The AALS Conference on Clinical Legal Education is the association's second largest conference with the 2015 conference having approximately 700 clinicians in attendance. [11] The conference's sessions focus on practice areas and common areas of concern for clinicians.
AALS publishes The Journal of Legal Education, which focuses on teaching methods and scholarship, movements and reform, and other central issues facing legal education and the profession. [12]
The AALS requires its members to follow a nondiscrimination policy regarding "race, color, religion, national origin, sex, age, disability, or sexual orientation," and for member law schools to require this of any employer to which it gives access for recruitment.
The United States Armed Forces' "don't ask, don't tell" (DADT) policy was seen by the AALS as impermissible discrimination. However, the AALS excused its members from blocking access to the military since the passage of the Solomon Amendment, which denies federal funding to the parent university of a law school as well as the school itself if military recruiters are not given full campus access. However, the AALS at the time required schools to take "ameliorative" measures when allowing military recruiters on campus, including placing "warning" signs on campus when military recruiting takes place, scheduling interviews off campus away from "core" areas, "prohibit[ing] entirely the delivery of discretionary support services" to military recruiters, charging military employers who use law school resources "reasonable fees for use of law school staff, facilities and services," etc. [13] The AALS at the time encouraged law schools to deny benefits to military recruiters that they would ordinarily provide employers, such as coffee and free parking. Specifically, the AALS wrote in a memo to all law school deans in the United States:
The main point of this Report therefore is that reasonable access does not dictate equal access. Though schools should conduct themselves professionally regarding the military on this issue, the language of the law does not obligate schools to do anything else beyond providing reasonable access; within the bounds of professional conduct, reasonable access does not in the Section's view imply that schools are obligated to provide other free services or amenities (such as, perhaps, scheduling appointment times, collecting and transmitting resumes, free parking, endless supplies of coffee, snacks or lunches and the like). Beyond providing the "reasonable access" mentioned in the law, schools should avoid entanglement with military on-campus activities and devote their energies and resources to maximizing amelioration. [14]
The AALS engaged in litigation challenging the Solomon Amendment as violative of the First Amendment (see e.g., Rumsfeld v. Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights, Inc. ). In an interesting coincidence, The Judge Advocate General's School of the United States Army is a fee-paying nonmember of AALS.
Although DADT has been ended, and although President Barack Obama called upon college campuses to welcome military recruiters during his 2011 State of the Union address, some law professors have questioned why the AALS has issued no statement declaring an end to its recommendations. [15]
"Don't ask, don't tell" (DADT) was the official United States policy on military service of homosexual people. Instituted during the Clinton administration, the policy was issued under Department of Defense Directive 1304.26 on December 21, 1993, and was in effect from February 28, 1994, until September 20, 2011. The policy prohibited military personnel from discriminating against or harassing closeted homosexual or bisexual service members or applicants, while barring openly gay, lesbian, or bisexual persons from military service. This relaxation of legal restrictions on service by gays and lesbians in the armed forces was mandated by Public Law 103–160, which was signed November 30, 1993. The policy prohibited people who "demonstrate a propensity or intent to engage in homosexual acts" from serving in the armed forces of the United States, because their presence "would create an unacceptable risk to the high standards of morale, good order and discipline, and unit cohesion that are the essence of military capability".
St. Mary's University is a private Roman Catholic university in San Antonio, Texas. Founded by the Society of Mary (Marianists) in 1852, St. Mary's is the oldest Catholic university in Texas and the American Southwest.
Title IX is a landmark federal civil rights law in the United States that was enacted as part of the Education Amendments of 1972. It prohibits sex-based discrimination in any school or any other education program that receives funding from the federal government. This is Public Law No. 92‑318, 86 Stat. 235, codified at 20 U.S.C. §§ 1681–1688.
The University of La Verne (ULV) is a private university in La Verne, California. Founded in 1891, the university is composed of the College of Arts & Sciences, College of Business & Public Management, the LaFetra College of Education, College of Law, College of Health and Community Well-Being, an online adult school, two military centers, and a Regional Campus Administration that oversees six regional campuses. It awards undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral degrees. Many of their classes are taught at smaller campuses throughout the greater Los Angeles area and Kern County.
Stanford Law School (SLS) is the law school of Stanford University, a private research university near Palo Alto, California. Established in 1893, Stanford Law had an acceptance rate of 6.28% in 2021, the second-lowest of any law school in the country. George Triantis currently serves as Dean.
The University of California College of the Law, San Francisco is a public law school in San Francisco, California, United States. It was known as the University of California, Hastings College of the Law from 1878 to 2023.
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Loyola Law School is the law school of Loyola Marymount University, a private Catholic university in Los Angeles, California. Loyola was established in 1920.
Proposition 209 is a California ballot proposition which, upon approval in November 1996, amended the state constitution to prohibit state governmental institutions from considering race, sex, or ethnicity, specifically in the areas of public employment, public contracting, and public education. Modeled on the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the California Civil Rights Initiative was authored by two California academics, Glynn Custred and Tom Wood. It was the first electoral test of affirmative action policies in North America. It passed with 55% in favor to 45% opposed, thereby banning affirmative action in the state's public sector.
New England Law Boston is a private law school in Boston, Massachusetts. It was founded as Portia School of Law in 1908 and is located in downtown Boston near the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.
The term Solomon Amendment has been applied to several provisions of U.S. law originally sponsored by U.S. Representative Gerald B. H. Solomon (R-NY).
The University of Memphis Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law is an American Bar Association accredited law school and is the only law school in Memphis, Tennessee. The school has been associated with the University of Memphis since the law school's formation in 1962. The school was named in honor of former University president Cecil C. Humphreys. It is also referred to as U of M Law, Memphis Law, or Memphis Law School.
Suffolk University Law School is the private, non-sectarian law school of Suffolk University located in downtown Boston, across the street from the Boston Common and the Freedom Trail, two blocks from the Massachusetts State House, and a short walk to the financial district. Suffolk Law was founded in 1906 by Gleason Archer Sr. to provide a legal education for those who traditionally lacked the opportunity to study law because of socio-economic or racial discrimination.
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