“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, housing, safety, and economic security. We emphatically urge Congress and the… Continue »
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 »
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 »
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 »
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Congratulations to esteemed SALT Board member Colleen Shanahan and her Justice Lab students on well-deserved... 