Legal Education

SALT Announces Co-Presidents Elect, Nominees to Board of Governors Copy

    SALT is proud to announce the following Co-Presidents Elect and Nominees to the Board of Governors.   The Nominees will be presented as a slate at the Members’ Meeting on Friday October 2, 2015 at 6 p.m. Pacific Time at the Doubletree by Hilton Hotel in Anaheim, CA.    The Co-Presidents Elect will serve a two-year term starting on January 1, 2016, and elected Board members start their three-year terms on January 1. Only those SALT members current in their dues as of September 15 may vote in the election. If you are unsure about the status of your membership, please e-mail your name and school to info@saltlaw.org before September 15.  If you would like to vote by proxy, please send... Continue »

Farewell to SALT Founder and Civil Rights Giant Norman Dorsen

In memoriam: Norman Dorsen (1930-2017) Founder of SALT, NYU School of Law Legend, Former General Counsel and President of the Board of the ACLU, Civil Liberties Giant, Social Justice Visionary, and Friend   The Founding of SALT by Norman Dorsen, Michael Rooke-Ley, and Joyce Saltalamacchia   2008 SALT Tribute to Norman Dorsen Thirty-five years ago, Norman Dorsen created the Society of American Law Teachers, dedicated to justice, equality, excellence and academic freedom. He appreciated that law teachers could act and speak more boldly than law schools. He also understood that an organization should include, not just professors, but the many professionals who make significant contributions to legal education without the title of professor. Plus the acronym—SALT—is cool! In creating... Continue »

LWI & ALWD Full Citizenship Project for All Law Faculty

LWI and ALWD have chosen this day to launch a new campaign, the “Full Citizenship Project for All Law Faculty,” because of the professional status challenges that continue to plague skills-based and academic support law faculty, who are predominantly women.  They are inviting individual signatures endorsing the Full Citizenship Statement, which the SALT Board voted to endorse in March 2015. SALT has long supported efforts to strengthen the role of the very faculty–including legal writing, clinical and academic support faculty–most able to lead law school efforts to further experiential education. The signature campaign begins today and will end on Equal Pay Day (April 4).   Please consider adding your name here and sharing this message with your contacts.   The LWI and ALWD press release... Continue »

Call for Action–Contact ABA Delegates to Oppose Bar Passage Standard Revision

SALT asks that you immediately contact your state’s ABA Delegates and other ABA delegates you may know to urge rejection of a proposal that will come before the ABA House of Delegates as Resolution 110B on Monday, February 6 (sample email below).  If you are in the Miami area, we also encourage you to attend the House of Delegates Session and speak against Resolution 110B. The proposal would revise ABA Standard 316, the bar passage accreditation standard, to impose a single nationwide standard on all law schools.  Specifically, the proposed standard would require that 75% of all members of a law school graduating class who sit for a bar exam must pass within two years of graduation.  The proposal is simplistic in failing to take into account dramatic variations in passing scores… Continue »

SALT Endorses LWI Best Practices for Security of Position for 405(c) Faculty

SALT has repeatedly expressed its commitment to a policy of full citizenship for all law faculty. No justification exists for subordinating one group of law faculty to another based on the nature of the course, the subject matter, or the teaching matter. To the contrary, all full-time law faculty should have the opportunity to achieve academic freedom, security of position and governance rights. Making artificial distinctions between doctrinal, clinical and legal writing faculty undermines the legal education mission; removing faculty hierarchies is important to ensuring adequate curricular attention to doctrine, skills, and values. Moreover, security of position is a commitment of a law school to allow a critical range of inquiry and experimentation to full-time faculty who have dedicated... Continue »

SALT Names 2017 Great Teacher, Human Rights, and Lifetime Achievement Honorees

At its upcoming Annual Dinner to be held on January 6, 2017, in San Francisco, SALT will honor three champions of justice, diversity and teaching excellence.  The Great Teacher Award recognizes Professor Frank Askin of Rutgers Law School, a SALT founding member, for his longstanding, tireless defense of civil liberties and his work mentoring and training a new generation of civil rights lawyers.  The M. Shanara Gilbert Human Rights Award recognizes Zahra Billoo, Executive Director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations San Francisco Bay Area, for her courageous work to promote justice and mutual understanding through community organizing and civil rights advocacy.   A special Lifetime Achievement Award recognizes Charles Ogletree, Harvard Law School Professor and Executive Director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race... Continue »

SALT Announces Nominees to Board of Governors Copy

  SALT is proud to announce the following Nominees to the Board of Governors.  The Nominees will be presented as a slate at the Annual Members’ Meeting to be held at 6:15 p.m. on Friday, September 30, 2016, at The John Marshall Law School in Chicago, Illinois, in conjunction with the 2016 SALT Teaching Conference. Elected Board members start their three-year terms on January 1, 2017.  SALT members are encouraged to attend the meeting in person or to vote by proxy by submitting an online proxy form. You must be a member in good standing of SALT at the time of the meeting or at the time you submit a proxy.  If you are unsure of your membership status, please... Continue »

SALT Urges ABA Council to Address Unanswered Questions Before Revising Bar Passage Standard

SALT Comments on Proposed Standard 316 Revisions While the proposed standard’s simplicity has appeal, unanswered questions remain about how the standard will work, especially in view of the recent worrying declines in the rate of bar passage in many states and for many schools. We urge the Council to consider the questions we raise below before adopting the standard to ensure it works fairly and appropriately. As we also note, we continue to have fundamental concerns about the limitations of the current system of licensing lawyers through the bar exam and the unfortunate ways in which Standard 316 affects law school admissions and pedagogy. Removing the flexibility in the current standard may well exacerbate those problems. We urge the... Continue »

LWI Best Practices for Security of Position for 405(c) Faculty

SALT has repeatedly expressed its commitment to a policy of full citizenship for all law faculty. No justification exists for subordinating one group of law faculty to another based on the nature of the course, the subject matter, or the teaching matter. To the contrary, all full-time law faculty should have the opportunity to achieve academic freedom, security of position and governance rights. Making artificial distinctions between doctrinal, clinical and legal writing faculty undermines the legal education mission; removing faculty hierarchies is important to ensuring adequate curricular attention to doctrine, skills, and values. Moreover, security of position is a commitment of a law school to allow a critical range of inquiry and experimentation to full-time faculty who have dedicated... Continue »

SALT Co-Sponsors B.A. to J.D. Pipeline Event with Elon Law

SALT promotes social justice in the teaching and practice of law, including pipeline work to support and encourage people of color and others from marginalized communities to enter law school, law practice and law teaching.  On April 9, 2016, SALT collaborated with students, faculty and staff at Elon University School of Law in Greensboro, North Carolina, to host a B.A. to J.D. Pipeline Event focusing on intercultural competence and education.  Students from local high schools and community colleges were among those invited to attend.  The event included panels on The Law School Journey, Professionalism and Intercultural Engagement, and Tips and Strategies for Applying to Law School.  Former SALT Co-President Olympia Duhart (Nova Southeastern University Shepard Broad College of Law)... Continue »