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 their professional lives to educating students and expanding legal knowledge and understanding, and who, through the process of achieving security of position, have proved their ability and willingness to contribute to that enterprise. That mutual commitment should be supported. With those values and goals in mind, the SALT Board of Governors on October 1, 2016, endorsed the Legal Writing Institute’s statement on Best Practices for Protecting Security of Position for 405(c) Faculty.
Best Practices for Protecting Security of Position for 405(c) Faculty