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Welcome Message from the President
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Dodging the Bullet
All through 1983 and most of 1984 Cooley Law School lived under the threat of a decertification hearing by the American Bar Association. We were informed in April of 1983 that there would be a hearing before September 15th of that year.
We protested that the notice was not in accordance with the bar’s own procedural rules.
In August of 1983, Jim White again told us that we would be subjected to a Rule IV hearing, this time to be convened either on October 21 or November 11. Again, we protested that the notice was deficient.
Undaunted, the ABA wrote us still another threatening letter on November 3, 1983, this time announcing that the hearing would take place on January 20, 1984 or January 27, 1984. Equally undaunted, we replied that they had still failed to set the hearing for a date certain as required by their rules.
The January dates came and went. Instead of a hearing, we were favored with yet another summons, this time setting the date of April 6, 1984 for the hearing.
It never happened. Dean LeDuc doggedly supplied Jim White with memoranda and statistics. He pointed out that we were due for our regular sabbatical reinspection in the fall. He finally persuaded the accreditation committee simply to consolidate their Rule IV hearing with the required seven year site evaluation.
And so it was that in November of 1984 the Thomas Cooley Law School was visited by yet another distinguished committee of scholars and educators. Chaired by the University of New Mexico’s Law School Dean, Peter Winograd, the team consisted of Washburn Law School Dean Carl Monk, Dean Claude R. Sowle of the University of Miami School of Law, Professor L. Harold Levinson of the Vanderbilt University School of Law, and Roger Jacobs, Law Librarian at Notre Dame.
On November 10, 1984 the inspection team met with several representatives of the law school including Dean LeDuc and me in what is commonly called ‘the exit interview.’ On November 15th I sent a memo to the members of our board of directors and to the faculty in which I summarized the comments made by the inspectors during that interview, and I invited reactions from our people.
I tried to recount in some detail just what the visitors had said. Their observations were, after all, being offered in a spirit of helpfulness, and I thought our faculty might find them of particular interest.
Among the more interesting comments were several made by Professor Harold Levinson. He felt that "too much stuff" was being taught at Cooley. By 'stuff' he meant to tell us that we were requiring our students to learn too many details. He cited one instance in which the minimum age of a United States Senator as provided in the US constitution was asked on an examination.
Professor Levinson thought such things were trivial; that such minutia can be learned by students in a commercial bar review course; that law school should concern itself with larger, more theoretical matters. He regarded what we were doing as the 'trivia' approach to legal education.
He went on to say that there is no need to teach the details of Civil Procedure in law school. This information, he insisted can be learned by reading the court rules. Levinson claimed that there was too much emphasis on Michigan law. Course syllabi were too long, in his opinion, and our faculty and students work too hard on the details. "Knowing the stuff," he repeated, is not a function of law school.
Roger Jacobs, the Notre Dame law librarian, echoed Levinson’s views. He felt that out-of-state students would be bored with the details of Michigan procedure and that teaching Michigan law and Michigan court rules was a misplaced effort.
Cooley’s guru of civil procedure, Professor Roger Needham, favored me with his reaction to their opinions. "Obviously, they are grossly ignorant about procedure," he wrote in a November 21st memo, which continued:
"I could give a long answer, in which I would point out that one cannot understand 'procedure' without being able to function within a system of procedure; and the various reasons why Federal Procedure does not provide an appropriate model. But I prefer the short answer, a substitute for my right arm extended, fist out, and middle finger erect:
"A) I know more about legal education than any of these gentlemen, having survived in a more selective and demanding market. [continuing legal education.]
B) I know more about Civil Procedure than all of them put together.
C) I rejoice in tenure and academic freedom. Therefore:
D) I propose to continue to teach civil procedure with reference to the Michigan rules then current, until such time as I begin to take "Legal Educators" seriously - whereon I will consent to being led away, quietly, to a home."
As I read Roger’s memo, I thought it was probably better for Cooley’s relationship with the American Bar Association that Dean LeDuc was our academic spokesman rather than Professor Needham.
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This Page was last updated on:
08/19/2004