What is SALT?: 
(For a longer history of SALT, download a pdf.) 

For over thirty-five years, the Society of American Law Teachers (SALT) has been working to:

* -make the legal profession more inclusive and reflective of the rich diversity of this nation;

* -enhance the quality of legal education by promoting innovative teaching methodologies and advancing social justice within the curriculum; and

* -extend the power of law to underserved individuals and communities.

SALT began in 1972 through the organizing efforts of Norman Dorsen, now Frederick I. and Grace A. Stokes Professor of Law, Co-Director, Arthur Garfield Hays Civil Liberties Program, and Counselor to the President of New York University; Thomas Emerson from Yale Law School; and a cadre of fellow progressives.  The founding board included such notables as Derrick A. Bell, Jr., the first African American to attain tenure at Harvard Law School; Barbara Babcock, the first tenured woman professor at Stanford Law School; Ruth Bader Ginsburg, U.S. Supreme Court Justice; and Cruz Reynoso, former California Supreme Court Justice.

SALT had several main goals:

 The first was to encourage developments in legal education that would make curriculum, programs, and forms of instruction more responsive to current social needs.  Law school pedagogy hadn’t really changed since Christopher Columbus Langdell, dean of Harvard Law School back in 1870, originated the “case method.”  The early 1970s brought new waves of law school students, and faculty, into the academy: women; African American, Puerto Rican, Latino, and other students of color; returning veterans from the Vietnam war; gays and lesbians who were open about their sexual orientation; and non-traditional students from different classes and backgrounds.  SALT wanted to change the environment within law schools to encourage the participation and successful incorporation of these newcomers into the legal profession.  SALT was particularly interested in reevaluating legal ethics, in the wake of the Nixon Watergate debacle, and broadening the scope of how the legal profession saw its responsibility to further social justice.


SALT Today:

 Currently, SALT members are dedicated to activist scholarship in areas such as immigration, governmental accountability for the “war on terror,” access to education and economic opportunities, and academic freedom, to name a few; mentoring a new generation of law faculty and administrators to make the academy more reflective of our country’s changing demographics; fostering a culture of social justice within law schools and among law school students; and impacting policymaking and discourse both within the profession and beyond.

Download a pdf of SALT at Work, documenting SALT's activities from January 2008-December 2009. 

 

 

Past Presidents of SALT:
(In Order of Service)

Norman Dorsen (NYU)
Howard Lesnick (Pennsylvania)
David L. Chambers (Michigan)
George J. Alexander (Santa Clara)
Wendy W. Williams (Georgetown)
Rhonda R. Rivera (Ohio State)
Emma Coleman Jordan (Georgetown)
Charles R. Lawrence III (Georgetown)
Howard A. Glickstein (Touro)
Sylvia A. Law (NYU)
Patricia A. Cain (Iowa)
Jean C. Love (Iowa)
Linda S. Greene (Wisconsin)
Phoebe A. Haddon (Temple)
Stephanie M. Wildman (Santa Clara)
Carol Chomsky (Minnesota)
Margaret E. Montoya (New Mexico)
Paula C. Johnson (Syracuse)
Michael Rooke-Ley (Seattle)
José R. Juárez, Jr. (Denver)
Holly Maguigan (NYU)
Eileen Kaufman (Touro)
Tayyab Mahmud (Seattle)

 

Past Vice-Presidents:
Anthony G. Amsterdam (NYU)
Derrick A. Bell, Jr. (NYU)
Gary Bellow (Harvard)
Ralph S. Brown, Jr. (Yale)
Thomas Emerson (Yale)