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Welcome Message from the President
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Weasel Words From White
My accusation apparently got somebody’s attention.
I had charged the American Bar Association with publishing a libelous claim about the Cooley Law School admissions system. Their accreditation committee report clearly stated that we were guilty of racial discrimination.
I threatened suit. I told them that publishing such an accusation would damage our school, and letting several months go by before considering a retraction only made matters worse and would increase our civil damages.
On January 12, 1982, Jim White, the ABA legal education consultant replied to my letter of December 11, 1981.
He took great pains to deny that the accusation of racial discrimination had been published, listing the names of those to whom he had sent copies of the committee’s report, and insisting that they were all persons "involved in the evaluation process."
They weren’t. He knew very well that John Bauman Executive Director of the Association of American Law Schools was not a member of the committee nor was he otherwise involved in the evaluation of Cooley Law School. And sending the letter to Bauman was the only publication I had cited.
I was still shaking my head over that bit of obfuscation, when the next paragraphs of his letter literally made me chuckle.
"You ask that I rescind a portion of the action of the Accreditation Committee. As Consultant on Legal Education to the American Bar Association, I do not have the authority to vacate or modify any action of the Accreditation Committee with regard to any law school.
"I have discussed your letters with Council Chairman Schaber and Accreditation Committee Chairman Dickinson. The Committee does not take action with respect to any school by correspondence, but only acts during scheduled meetings of the Committee. In light of the additional information you have provided, we have polled the Accreditation Committee with respect to clarification of the intent of the Committee’s action with respect to the second sentence of Accreditation Committee Finding (3) (d) as contained in my letter of November 10, 1981. A majority of the members of the Committee have replied in the affirmative. Thus, restructured Finding (3) (d) will read as follows:
(3) Cooley appears to be in violation of the Standards, and published Interpretations thereof, in the following particulars:
(d) The School maintains and enforces an admissions process which gives significant weight to personal and financial support of candidates for admission by individual lawyers [ Standards 304(c) and 501 ]. The Committee cites particularly the reinspection team’s exhaustive discussion of the issue."
First he says there’s nothing he can do about the committee’s action. Then he says they never take any action except during a regularly scheduled meeting. Then, viola! He somehow finds the authority to poll the committee, and they somehow find the ability to act without a meeting!
Of course what they ended up doing and saying was typically obscure and meaningless. We are now being told that we are in violation of the standards because our admissions officers give weight to the candidates’ references and supporters. You could study the ABA Standards until you were cross eyed without finding a single word suggesting that there is anything wrong with doing that.
In true ABA fashion, however, the committee’s retreat from the accusation of racial discrimination was not absolute. White’s letter continued with this bit of weaseling:
"The language ‘This process discriminates against groups which are poorly represented in the Bar [Standard 211] and, taken with a level of enrollment from minority groups which is at worst 7/10 of one percent and at best 4.25 percent, in a state where the percentage of minority groups in the population is 11.2 percent, also indicates inadequate attention to and possible frustration of the purposes of Standard 212.’ will be placed on the agenda of the Accreditation Committee at its April 1982 meeting so as to give consideration to your correspondence and position. We invite your submission of any additional information which may bear on this question."
The bottom line: We’ve taken the accusation of racial discrimination out of our last letter, but we are still threatening to accuse you of racial discrimination unless you can talk us out of it before April.
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This Page was last updated on:
08/19/2004