What’s New

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 »

An Urgent Time to Fight for Human Rights

SALT Statement on Human Rights Day December 10, 2016 The Society of American Law Teachers (SALT), a community of progressive law teachers working for justice, diversity, and academic excellence, is committed to respect for the rule of law, to an inclusive society, and to social justice. SALT’s current human rights agenda focuses on many critical issues, such as affirmative action, academic freedom, LGBTQ rights, immigrant rights, institutional racism, inequality, and the treatment of prisoners. This Human Rights Day, SALT reaffirms its commitment to defending and securing the humanity, dignity, and rights of all people. We join with others across the political spectrum to express grave concerns about the future of civil, constitutional, and human rights under the administration of... Continue »

SALT Joins Amicus Brief with the NY Court of Appeals Addressing Color Discrimination in Jury Selection

On October 20, 2016, SALT joined the Fred T. Korematsu Center for Law and Equality (Korematsu Center), 18 other bar associations and non-profit organizations, and 32 law school professors in filing an amicus brief with the New York Court of Appeals, urging the Court to recognize that excluding an individual from jury service based on the color of her skin violates the Equal Protection Clause of the United States and New York Constitutions. The United States Supreme Court held in the seminal case Batson v. Kentucky that a prosecutor who exercises a peremptory strike raising an inference of racial discrimination must provide a neutral explanation for the strike. 476 U.S. 79, 97 (1986). In the case before the New... Continue »

Members Approve 2017 Board Nominees

SALT members approved the slate of board nominees beginning terms on January 1, 2017, at the SALT Annual Member Meeting on September 30. New board members are Allyson Gold, Loyola Chicago; Vinay Harpalani, Savannah; Hugh Mundy, John Marshall, and Sean Scott, Loyola Los Angeles. Returning board members are Claudia Angelos, NYU; Doug Colbert, Maryland; Brooks Holland, Gonzaga; Colleen Shanahan, Temple; and Kaimi Wenger, Thomas Jefferson. Read on for statements of interest in serving on SALT Board of Governors: Claudia Angelos, Clinical Professor of Law, NYU School of Law (returning) The three years since I joined SALT’s Board of Governors have flown by. I share SALT’s values and its goals and would be privileged to continue for another term. Since... 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 »