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Welcome Message from the President
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Behind Closed Doors
On Saturday, July 20, 1974, The Council of the American Bar Association's Section of Legal Education and Admission to the Bar met at a hotel in Chicago and considered the application of the Thomas M. Cooley Law School for provisional approval.
Cooley was then a year and a half into the business of educating law students. Our first class of 76 students, the Cooley Class, was admitted in January of 1973; a second class, named for Justice James V. Campbell consisting of 150 students came on board in September of that year. Two more classes were organized in January and May of 1974 respectively, bringing the enrollment over 500. With another group of freshmen waiting in the wings to enroll in September, Cooley was about to surpass a student body of 700.
The genius of our three division, three semester program was that we would eventually have nine classes matriculating at any one time; three freshman classes, three junior classes and three classes of seniors. At each level, there would be a morning, afternoon and evening division section.
Now if every Cooley student were taking the standard curriculum of ten credit hours per term, we would be teaching a total of ninety credit hours. And if each full time professor were teaching ten credit hours per week, we could deliver the entire curriculum with nine full time faculty members. Moreover, if the seniors were being taught by part time instructors (sitting judges and practicing lawyers) we would only need six full time professors to carry the load.
On top of that, the ABA accreditation standards only required that the majority of the program be taught by full time faculty. So all we needed was a minimum of 46 credit hours to be taught by full time faculty, a little less than eight hours a week for each of our seven full time teachers.
On Saturday evening, I was asked to meet two representatives of the council for breakfast the next morning. Professor Charles Kelso, of Indiana University Law School, who was then the chairman of the section, and Professor Paul Haskell of Case Western Reserve were assigned to share with me some of the concerns of their colleagues on the council. I was to bring documentation on the teaching loads of our faculty.
Bob Krinock, the former FBI agent who was my assistant dean, overheard Professor Haskell telling someone that he was surprised to hear me say that Cooley was located in Lansing. He thought it was in Detroit. This despite the two inch thick briefing book we had supplied to him and the other council members.
On Sunday morning, I had the documentation. I was prepared to do the math again at breakfast, and if I couldn't persuade them that we had enough full time professors, well, I'd just promise to hire some more people, hoping they would give me a number I could live with. But the discussion over coffee took a curious turn. They didn't seem as worried about how many teachers we had as they were about the fact that I seemed to be able to hire more teachers without a meeting of the faculty or the board of directors. The council, they said, didn't like the ease and speed with which I seemed to be able to comply with their requests.
They went on to tell me that I had a reputation for being anti-intellectual, somehow disdainful of law school pedagogues who had no experience in the practice of law. I assured the gentlemen that I bore no malice toward any man, though admittedly I was not enamored with pseudo-intellectuals or educational elitists.
Nothing was heard form the council until much later when Bob Krinock and I had left for Lansing and called Jim White from the car. He told us we had been turned down, and that our application was referred back to the accreditation committee for further consultation. We were to report back at the mid winter meeting in February, 1975.
Some days later, we were informed in confidence about the actual proceedings of the council that Sunday afternoon. It was a comedy of inept decision making. First, a motion was made to accept the recommendation of the accreditation committee. That motion was seconded and voted on, but failed to achieve a majority. Only two members were in favor. A motion was then made to grant Cooley conditional provisional approval. Of course there is no such thing as conditional provisional approval. Conditional and provisional are redundant. But the motion was supported and discussed at length before being withdrawn.
Then a new motion was made simply to reject our application without giving any reason. A vote was taken, resulting in a tie. The chairman broke the tie by casting his vote against the motion. Once again, a motion was made to grant Cooley conditional provisional approval and once again there was an extended discussion. Then a substitute motion was proposed. But the makers of the original motion refused to accept the substitute, so they voted on whether to permit the substitute motion to be made. That vote carried, with four dissenters. Whereupon a substitute motion was made referring the matter back to the accreditation committee. That motion was adopted.
Cooley was in its infancy, and I was dean, president and czar. I thought the whole process would have been amusing, if it had not been so disappointing. But then, I had not yet had the pleasure of attending a full scale law school faculty meeting.
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This Page was last updated on:
08/19/2004