What’s New

SALT Names 2018 Great Teacher and Human Rights Honorees

At its upcoming Annual Awards Celebration to be held on January 5, 2018, in San Diego, SALT will honor two champions of justice, diversity and teaching excellence. Professor Jeffrey Selbin of Berkeley Law will receive the 2018 SALT Great Teacher Award. Professor Robert S. Chang and the Fred T. Korematsu Center for Law and Equality will receive the 2018 M. Shanara Gilbert Human Rights Award (details below). We are revamping the SALT Annual Dinner to increase interaction and fun! The 2018 SALT Annual Awards Celebration will feature presentations by the Great Teacher and M. Shanara Gilbert Human Rights awardees along with a gala reception providing an opportunity to interact with awardees, greet long-time and new SALT friends, usher in new Co-Presidents Matthew... Continue »

Call for Nominations — 2018 Great Teacher Award

Pictured, 2017 Award Winner Frank Askin SALT holds an annual awards event to celebrate the SALT’s community, values, and honorees to coincide with the January AALS meeting. Mark your calendars: This year’s SALT awards celebration will be on Friday, January 5, 2018, at a location TBA in San Diego.  A highlight of this celebration is the presentation of SALTʹs Great Teacher Award. SALT invites you to submit a nomination for this award. Award criteria and past awardees are set out below.  Current members of the SALT Board of Governors are not eligible for nomination. You must be a current member of SALT to make a nomination. You can click here to join or renew.  To check the status of your membership,... Continue »

Call for Nominations — 2018 M. Shanara Gilbert Human Rights Award

Pictured, 2017 Award Winner Zahra Billoo SALT holds an annual awards event to celebrate the SALT’s community, values, and honorees to coincide with the January AALS meeting. Mark your calendars: This year’s SALT awards celebration will be on Friday, January 5, 2018, at a location TBA in San Diego.  A highlight of this celebration is the presentation of SALTʹs M. Shanara Gilbert Human Rights Award. SALT invites you to submit a nomination for this award. Award criteria and past awardees are set out below.  Current members of the SALT Board of Governors are not eligible for nomination. You must be a current member of SALT to make a nomination. You can click here to join or renew.  To check the status of... Continue »

Call for Nominations — Junior Faculty Teaching Award

Pictured, 2016 Award winner Vinay Harpalani The Society of American Law Teachers seeks nominations for the Junior Faculty Teaching Award.  Mark your calendars: This year the award will be given at SALT’s Annual Awards Celebration on Friday, January 5, 2018, at a location TBA in San Diego.  The award recognizes an outstanding recent entrant (seven years or fewer) into legal education who demonstrates a commitment to justice, equality and academic excellence through his or her teaching. This award is designed to honor all faculty, including clinical, legal research and writing, librarian and doctrinal teachers. Eligibility and Selection Criteria To be considered for the Junior Faculty Teaching Award, applicants must be: • Full-time faculty members with no more than seven years of teaching in the law... Continue »

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

  SALT is proud to announce the selection of Co-Presidents Elect and nominees to the Board of Governors.  Their photos and statements of interest are set out below.  The Board nominees will be presented as a slate at the SALT Annual Member Meeting to be held on Saturday, November 11, 2017, at 6 p.m. at the Loyola University New Orleans College of Law Stuart H. Smith Law Clinic and Center for Social Justice, 540 Broadway Street, New Orleans, LA 70118.  The Co-Presidents Elect will serve two-year terms starting on January 1, 2018, and elected Board members will begin three-year terms on the same date. SALT members may submit additional Board of Governors nominations.  The additional nominations must (1) be made no... 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 »

SALT STATEMENT OF SUPPORT FOR LEGAL SERVICES CORPORATION

“LSC plays a critical role in preserving our nation’s promise of equal justice under law and the effective functioning of our adversary system of justice.”   Please read and share widely SALT’s Statement in Support of Legal Services Corporation, which is set out below and available here. SALT STATEMENT IN SUPPORT OF LEGAL SERVICES CORPORATION The Society of American Law Teachers (SALT) writes to express serious alarm and deep concern about the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) proposal to eliminate funding for the Legal Services Corporation (LSC). Since 1974, LSC has provided essential civil legal services to low-income Americans.  LSC is often the sole lifeline for vulnerable people with civil legal problems that affect their health,... Continue »

UPDATED–The SALT Student Advisory Council: Getting Students Directly Involved In SALT

By Madeleine Harnois and SSAC The pilot year of SSAC, the SALT Student Advisory Council, is coming to a close. It has been an exciting learning process as its members learned the ins and outs of SALT’s operations and administration and helped to get SSAC off the ground. Law students Madeleine Harnois, Christina  Nguyen, Emma Douglas, Preston Brasch, Isabel Breit, and Tabias Olajuawon all worked as part of SSAC during its first year. SSAC was originally conceived to assist SALT in advancing progressive legal education by connecting students to the dedicated professors who work to better the law school experience. SALT has long sought to increase the social justice aspects of law school curricula, and its board members wanted to open more direct lines of communication for student input and… Continue »

Will a Trumped-Up Justice System Mean a Return to Mass Incarceration?

By Hugh Mundy, Associate Professor, The John Marshall Law School During his presidential campaign, Donald Trump relied on vague “tough on crime” rhetoric over policy specifics. Trump’s post-election selection of Jeff Sessions as Attorney General, though, lends credence to his campaign trail exhortations. As the United States Attorney for the Southern District of Alabama in the 1980s, Sessions prosecuted hundreds of federal cases during the apex of the mass incarceration era. Later, as a United States senator, he opposed legislation introducing modest reductions in prison time for drug offenders. In light of Sessions’ track record, an uptick in federal prosecutions from recent years appears inevitable. The views on crime and punishment espoused by Trump and Sessions are out of step with reform-minded initiatives popular on both sides of the political aisle…. 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 »