ABA Standards for Law School Faculty

In the March 2, 2009 edition of Inside Higher Ed, Doug Lederman's article (Calling In the Big Guns) details the increasing tensions between the ABA and the American Law Deans Association. Why should we care about this? The debate centers around the freedom of law school deans to set the conditions of employment for their law faculties. The ABA's "Standards on the Hiring and Employment of Faculty Members" presents several restrictions on the law school deans. Lederman characterizes the debate this way:

On one side, many law deans have argued that the requirements represent unwarranted intrusion in their schools' affairs, and drive up costs. On the other are advocates for some law school employees, particularly clinical faculty members and librarians whose status would be most likely to change if the standards were eliminated. They have portrayed the deans' campaign as an attack on tenure and the academic freedom that tenure exists in part to protect, an assertion the deans dispute.

The most important front of this debate has to do with the status of clinical law professors. Because these clinical programs are of such interest and importance to law students, the future of these positions is important to all of us.