SALT EQUALIZER In This Issue Co-Presidents' Column: Facing the

SALT

EQUALIZER

Volume 2011, Issue 2 Society of American Law Teachers

September 2011

SALT EQUALIZER

The SALT Equalizer is a publication of the

Society of American Law Teachers.

Raleigh Hannah Levine Editor

Virginia Sutton Layout

Raquel Aldana Co-President

Steven W. Bender Co-President

Robert Lancaster Secretary

Patricia A. Cain Treasurer

Hazel Weiser Executive Director

To contact the SALT Equalizer, write the editor at William

Mitchell College of Law, 875 Summit Ave., St. Paul, MN

55105-3076; call (651) 290-7503; or e-mail raleigh.levine@

wmitchell.edu. Visit the SALT website at www.saltlaw.org.

In This Issue

Co-Presidents’ Column, page 1

Executive Director’s Column, page 1

Board of Governors Election and

Candidate Statements, page 4

Breaking In to the Legal Academy, page 7

Breaking In Program at Northeastern,

page 7

B.A. to J.D. Pipeline November Conference,

page 8

2012 SALT Dinner, page 9

Access to Justice Committee, page 10

LGBT Committee, page 11

Issues in Legal Education Committee,

page 12

Human Rights Committee, page 13

New SALT Membership Structure, page 14

SALT Public Interest Retreats, page 15

SALT 2011-12 Calendar, page 15

Co-Presidents’ Column: Facing the Challenges to

Legal Education and the Legal Profession

Raquel Aldana, University of the Pacific McGeorge School of Law, and Steven W. Bender, Seattle

University School of Law

The theme of the 2010 SALT Teaching conference,

“Teaching in a Transformative Era: The Law School of the

Future,” gave us an opportunity to begin to address the

deep challenges facing legal education and the profes-

sion. Recent trends in law school admissions and news

stories about the state of affairs of the legal profession have

brought to light the urgency for progressive law profes-

sors—e.g., members of SALT—to weigh in to ensure that

longstanding values that matter to us are rescued responsi-

bly in this new climate of austerity.

The New York Times reported on August 23, 2011, in a story titled “Addressing the

Justice Gap,” that four-ﬁfths of low-income people have no access to lawyers when they need

Co-Presidents, continued on page 2

Executive Director’s Column

Hazel Weiser

The business of law schools is changing. As the ABA

Council continues its comprehensive review of the

standards that govern the operation of law schools,

we have learned a lot about the cost of legal educa-

tion, the relationships between law schools and their

universities, and the impact of these on the debt that

encumbers students for years after graduation. Since

SALT has members from all ranks of faculty, as well as

librarians, deans and other administrators including

admissions, career, and academic support, we have

a broader picture of how changes in the structure of legal education will affect the men and

women who have dedicated their careers to the academy. Amidst the calls for deregulation,

we have also heard the fears that with deregulation will come a new brand of legal educa-

tion, at least in some schools, without the professionalism that comes with a dedicated full-

time core of faculty protected in their teaching, scholarship, and service by tenure. How will

Executive Director, continued on page 3

SALT Executive Director Hazel Weiser

Co-Presidents Raquel Aldana

and Steve Bender

www.saltlaw.org

SALT Equalizer

Page 2

September 2011

one. This article does not even address the

middle-class justice gap, but if you simply

Google “legal representation for the middle

class,” plenty of stories turn up lamenting

the lack of access to lawyers for the middle

class and reporting on attempts by the

profession—such as unbundling of legal

services—to make lawyers more affordable

and more relevant to the lives of people.

Simultaneously, the dwindling number of

high-paying private ﬁrm jobs, combined

with shrinking state and federal budgets, and

less foundation money overall to fund public

interest law, means that too many recent law

graduates are not getting jobs. According to

the same New York Times story, only around

two-thirds of law school graduates in 2010

got jobs for which a law degree was required,

the lowest rate since 1996; in real numbers,

this is close to 15,000 lawyers who, the New

York Times concludes, “could be using

their legal expertise to help some of those

who need representation.” The problem, of

course, is that overwhelmingly these recent

graduates must bear a high debt burden and

most are not really all that prepared, on their

own, to provide the kinds of needed legal ser-

vices to underserved populations who must

face divorces, child support disputes, home

foreclosures, bankruptcies, landlord-tenant

disputes, consumer fraud, and immigration

proceedings without lawyers. Here is where

law schools and law professors are brought

into the picture, often not at all in the best

light. As David Segal noted in a January 8,

2011, New York Times article titled, “Is Law

School a Losing Game?,” law schools are

faulted for the debt burden, and would-be-

lawyers are cautioned against law school as

the new ﬁnancial trap, akin to the mortgage

debacle hat defrauded many consumers into

the worst decision of their lives. Would-be-

lawyers are starting to listen, it seems.

This year, nationally, there were 11.5%

fewer applicants to law school; the hit for

some law schools was even greater (30% and

above) as some more highly-ranked law

schools increased their class size to deal with

cuts in public funding for higher education

and raided other law schools for students. If

this trend continues, some law schools will

fail. Some, including SALT members, may

see this as good. Market-based forces will

force law schools to compete and redeﬁne

themselves, which ultimately could mean

an ostensibly cheaper and better product

for law students and clients. This might be

true if law schools were businesses and legal

services an assembly-line profession. Think

about what will be sacriﬁced in the race to

the bottom that law schools and the legal

profession are facing. One obvious target is

security of position, which is faulted for the

rising cost of legal education without sound

data to back up the claims. Another target is

legal scholarship. Much has been said about

the alleged questionable beneﬁts and the

enormous costs of scholarly production in

law schools. Indeed, a notable voice in this

rhetoric is Chief Justice John Roberts, who

once said “Pick up a copy of any law review

that you see and the ﬁrst article is likely to

be, you know, the inﬂuence of Immanuel

Kant on evidentiary approaches in 18th-

century Bulgaria, or something, which I’m

sure was of great interest to the academic

that wrote it, but isn’t of much help to the

bar.” (See http://www.acslaw.org/acsblog/

law-prof-iﬁll-challenges-chief-justice-

roberts%E2%80%99-take-on-academic-

scholarship.)

We agree with Justice Roberts on one

thing: Law professors should be concerned

that their work is relevant to the bar, and

they should aim to inﬂuence law, but we

vehemently disagree that philosophy or

comparative perspectives are irrelevant to

the development of law. This is an anti-in-

tellectual statement at its core, and it reveals

the direction that law schools and lawyers

are headed if we allow this type of rhetoric to

cheapen our education mission and our pro-

fession. Instrumental considerations, such

as student debt and skills-based teaching, do

and must matter; these are integrally tied to

access to justice concerns. Highly-indebted

recent law graduates who are not prepared

with lawyering skills to represent under-

served clients can do little to close the justice

gap. But SALT also believes that law is a dig-

niﬁed profession, which is ultimately about

justice, which is more than solely providing

rote and routine legal services. Lawyers

can shape law, inspire legal reform, and

improve societies. This is a worthy and noble

investment. And we must ask: Why aren’t

the states funding higher education and

law schools? How will law professors teach

and write in bold and creative ways without

academic freedom protection? Why isn’t

there a civil Gideon? Yes, we law schools and

we law professors must do our part. We must

think about how we can improve how we

teach and help our graduates achieve their

dreams and goals. But don’t expect us to stop

ﬁghting for values that make our profession

life-changing for individual clients and col-

lectively transforming for societies.

As we transition from our co-presidency

and leave you in the wonderful, caring

hands of Co-Presidents-Elect Jackie Gardina

and Ngai Pindell, we also urge you to join

us in this crucial debate. Your membership

in SALT, which is not solely your ﬁnancial

support but also your creativity and energy,

is needed now more than ever. Thank you.

Co-Presidents

▼ continued from page 1

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SALT Equalizer

Page 3

September 2011

article, also in this issue. Take a moment to

join SALT now, online or by downloading a

membership form, so that together, we can

continue the important work of this organi-

zation. The faster we meet our membership

goal, the sooner I can stop nagging!

Our activist social justice work

continues. In addition to challenging SB

70 in Arizona, SALT joined as amicus in the

challenge to the even more horrendous anti-

immigrant legislation passed in Alabama.

We are monitoring the repeal of “Don’t Ask

Don’t Tell,” coming full circle after years of

pursuing fairness and equity through the

FAIR v. Rumsfeld challenge to the Solomon

Amendment, insisting on amelioration on

all of our law school campuses, and now

pressing for anti-discrimination guidelines

to make repeal effective for all servicemem-

bers and applicants. In May, SALT joined

with 42 other organizations to oppose the

Prop 8 proponents’ motion to vacate Judge

Walker’s decision in Perry v. Brown, the

decision that invalidated Prop 8, to the

detriment of gays and lesbians living in

California.

In addition to our social justice work,

SALT cares about who is admitted to law

school, what is taught, and who is teaching.

Who is Admitted to Law School:

SALT’s commitment to improving access

to legal education and to the profession is

central to its mission. SALT has critiqued the

over-reliance on LSAT scores in admissions

processes, which work to the detriment of

many applicants of color; joined as amicus

in Grutter v. Bollinger (2003) before the

U.S. Supreme Court, which upheld diversity as

a valued criterion in law school admissions;

and has been pressing the ABA Standards

Review Committee to view all of the pro-

posed changes to law school regulation—

institutional bar pass rates, student learning

outcomes, faculty recruitment and retention

—with an eye towards how they will affect

the diversity of the legal profession.

We partnered with Professor Conrad

Johnson at Columbia Law School’s Lawyer-

ing in the Digital Age Clinic to produce

“A Disturbing Trend in Law School Diver-

sity,” http://blogs.law.columbia.edu/salt/,

originally launched in January 2008 and

updated in January 2010, to demonstrate

how, despite an increase in the number of

seats available in law schools, African-Amer-

ican and Mexican-American applicants are

not gaining admission. With the economy

so shattered, SALT is working with pre-law

advisors to better counsel college students of

color about the strategies needed to prepare

and apply to law schools.

What is Taught: SALT collaborated

with Golden Gate University School of Law

to collect and edit “Vulnerable Populations

and Transformative Law Teaching: A Critical

Reader,” published by Carolina Academic

Press (March 2011), offering twenty-one

essays connecting race, gender, nationality,

sexual orientation, and disability to econom-

ic vulnerability to inspire law teachers and

students to question their perceptions and

experiences about who creates and interprets

law, and who has access to power and the

force of law.

SALT runs biennial teaching confer-

ences with themes of social justice, equity,

and inclusiveness. New casebooks, articles,

and treatises are incubated at each confer-

ence. Our last conference, “Teaching in a

Transformative Age: The Law School of the

Future,” held on December 10-11, 2010,

attracted more than 230 law faculty from

around the world with upcoming publica-

tion of articles in two major law reviews.

Watch the SALTLAW.org website for an-

nouncements for the 2012 SALT teaching

conference, which is already in the planning

stages. Our 2012 Social Justice and Public

Interest retreats—Cover, Amaker, and Grillo

—are also in the planning stages, with dates

set and Yale and Vermont working on Cover,

Loyola-Chicago working on Amaker, and

Golden Gate taking the lead for Grillo.

deans negotiate their fair share of tuition

revenues with university presidents without

the prestige of valued scholars as teachers?

If deregulation ensues, will that experi-

ment eliminate teaching as a full-time job

at many law schools beyond the reach of a

living wage and the protections of academic

freedom that are needed to critique our

society? Will increased use of adjuncts and

retired practitioners eliminate faculty from

the important tasks of setting curriculum

and educational policies? Are we the last

generation of full-time dedicated law school

teachers? If that is true, what will happen to

our rebellious voices?

As we enter this difﬁcult and complex

last year of the ABA’s comprehensive review

of these standards, we need your member-

ship more than ever. For the last four years,

SALT has been supported by capacity-build-

ing grants from the Open Society Institute,

which enabled the organization to grow

with professional staff, a new website, im-

proved outreach and communications with

members, and a litany of social justice and

inclusiveness campaigns. The OSI grants

are over now, so SALT is asking you—mem-

bers, lapsed members, and friends within

the academy—to take a moment to join

SALT, renew your membership, and your

commitment to the organization. We need

paid memberships to continue on this path.

Since SALT membership is on an

academic year cycle, all member-

ships, except for lifetime ones,

ended on August 31, 2011.

Over the summer, we instituted a new

membership structure to conform member-

ship fees to positions within the academy,

ending the practice of pairing fees with sal-

ary. We thought this was a fairer way to as-

sess dues. A full explanation of the new dues

structure is available on the SALTLAW.org

website, and is included in my Membership

Executive Director

▼ continued from page 1

Executive Director, continued on page 4

www.saltlaw.org

SALT Equalizer

Page 4

September 2011

The Society of American Law Teachers is proud to announce the slate of candidates for the

SALT Board of Governors. The election will be held at the annual SALT membership meeting

on Friday, September 23, at 6:00 pm at Seattle University School of Law, Sullivan Hall, 901

12th Avenue, Seattle, WA, second ﬂoor gallery.

Current SALT members are eligible to vote by proxy via email ballot

which will be distributed in early September.

Emily A. Benfer,

Loyola University Chicago

School of Law (new candidate)

My goal is to provide law

students with 1) a forum for

thinking about legal reform, social change,

and the growth of public interest law; and 2)

the skills and community with which to ac-

complish their ideas around legal and social

change. SALT continues to be an excellent

collaborator and resource as I work to

achieve both goals. If elected to the Board of

Governors, I will work to advance these goals

and the SALT mission.

As a member of SALT’s Public Interest

Retreats Committee, I worked with SALT

to successfully revive the Norman Amaker

Social Justice & Public Interest Law Retreat,

for which I am the Faculty Advisor. At the

Retreat, students—as future public interest

lawyers—embraced their heightened moral

sensibility and the inherent responsibility

to advocate for marginalized and disem-

powered people. These students recognized

that they are an important part of a move-

ment to effectuate social justice. I hope to

increase the availability of such Retreats

across the country. As a Clinical Professor of

Law and Loyola’s SALT Representative, I am

incorporating innovative techniques, such

as interdisciplinary advocacy and cultural

awareness, into my teaching. Together, we

can improve our ability to provide stu-

dents—the future stewards of justice—with

the guidance and experience they need to

participate in this exciting time and to carry

society forward.

Thank you for your consideration of my

nomination. It would be a great honor to

continue this important work and further

SALT’s mission as a member of the SALT

Board of Governors.

Benjamin Davis,

University of Toledo College of

Law (re-election)

I have been working with

SALT for about four years pri-

marily with the Human Rights Committee.

SALT plays an important role in addressing a

range of social justice issues. I hope to have

a chance to continue to do that work. I have

been teaching 11 years with the last 7 at the

University of Toledo College of Law. My prin-

cipal work with SALT has been with regard to

confronting and seeking accountability for

US torture. I have also enjoyed working on

the LGBT issues, Immigration issues, blog-

ging at the SALT blog and doing other work

affecting human rights from time to time.

Olympia Duhart,

Nova Southeastern University

School of Law (re-election)

Working on SALT’s Board

of Governors for the past three

years has put new meaning in the term

“Labor of Love.” Yes, it’s been a lot of hard

Candidate Statements,

continued on page 5

SALT Board of Governors Candidate Statements 2011

Who is Teaching: Access to the

legal profession also means bringing more

people of color into law school teaching and

administration. For eight years, SALT has of-

fered a junior faculty development workshop

at the annual LatCrit teaching conference,

guiding fellows, graduate students, and

pre-tenured faculty through the maze of

unwritten rules about tenure. In June 2009,

SALT launched its New Teachers’ Pipeline

Committee, which hosts regional workshops

at which practitioners of color, women,

lesbian and gay attorneys, and other under-

represented groups can learn about careers

in legal academia, ranging from adjunct

teaching to doctrinal and clinical positions

to administration. SALT presented “How to

Become a Law Professor” at the National

Black Law Students Association in Houston

in March 2011, and sponsored others over

the spring and summer in Ft. Lauderdale,

New York, Boston, and Chicago, with our

partners Nova Southeastern University

Broad Law Center, CUNY Law School and its

Center for Diversity in the Legal Profession,

Northeastern University School of Law, John

Marshall Law School, and Northern Illinois

University College of Law.

Through the biennial “Promoting Diver-

sity in Law School Leadership” workshops,

co-sponsored with Seattle University School

of Law and the Korematsu Center, SALT fo-

cuses on how to bring more people of color,

women, lesbian and gay, and other non-

traditional law professors into deanships.

The next Deans’ Workshop, scheduled for

September 23-24, 2011, brings in University

of Washington School of Law as a new co-

sponsor.

Take a moment now to consider an

academy without SALT. Then renew your

membership!

Executive Director

▼ continued from page 3

SALT Board of Governors Election

Hazel Weiser, Executive Director, SALT

www.saltlaw.org

SALT Equalizer

Page 5

September 2011

work, but I’ve loved every minute of it.

It’s been a unique honor to work

side-by-side with such bright, exciting and

dedicated professionals. SALT’s commitment

to teaching excellence, diversity and justice

reﬂects the goals of my own career: My

scholarship focuses on government account-

ability, particularly the state’s responsibility

to marginalized groups, I serve on the board

of advisors for the Institute for Law Teaching

and Learning, and I worked for several years

with the Florida Innocence Project.

During my term on the Board, I served

SALT in many capacities. Along with serving

as Chair of the Membership Committee,

I worked on the Issues in Legal Educa-

tion Committee. Furthermore, I organized

pipeline Pipeline activities that have opened

doors for new faces to join the academy. I

also took on the task of co-editing SALT’s

new blog, which aims to build bridges be-

tween academy intellectuals and the public.

The best way for me to demonstrate

my love for the labor is by continuing my

service on the SALT Board of Governors. We

have made tremendous strides, but there is

still a lot of work to do. I look forward to the

challenges ahead knowing that I will always

ﬁnd inspiration in the SALT family. I hope

to continue SALT’s mission and continue

growing as a teacher, scholar, and advocate

of justice.

Solangel Maldonado,

Seton Hall University

School of Law

(election after appointment)

It is an honor to be consid-

ered for election to the SALT board. I have

been working with SALT since January 2011

as co-chair (with Ruben Garcia) of the

Equal Opportunity/Afﬁrmative Action Com-

mittee and as a member of the Nominations

Committee. I am currently working with the

Ronald Brown Center for Civil Rights and

Economic Development and CUNY’s Center

for Diversity in the Legal Profession on a new

initiative titled B.A. to J.D. Pipeline to help

pre-law college advisors better serve students

of color.

I have been working to increase diversity

in law schools since I began teaching 10

years ago. I am the founding chair of the

Dean’s Diversity Council at Seton Hall Law,

an advisory body that works to recruit stu-

dents from diverse backgrounds and assists

student organizations that aim to increase

diversity in the profession. I also served

as the chair of the Third National People

of Color Legal Scholarship Conference in

2010 and currently serve on the New Jersey

Supreme Court Committee on Women in the

Courts and the Board of Trustees of NJ LEEP,

a diversity pipeline program for high school

students at Seton Hall Law. My teaching and

scholarship reﬂect my commitment to social

justice. I teach LatCrit and Gender & the Law

(as well as Torts, Family Law, and Estates &

Trusts) and write about the intersection of

race and family law.

I would appreciate the opportunity to

continue to work with progressive scholars

committed to inclusion, diversity, and equality.

Marc Poirier, Seton Hall

University School of Law

(returning to board after hiatus)

I have been active with

SALT since 1993, at ﬁrst around

environmental justice. I served on the SALT

Board in 2002-2003 until illness forced me

to resign. At that time, I focused on Solomon

Amendment issues, including the Rumsfeld

v. FAIR litigation. I have achieved a full re-

covery, and am participating again in SALT’s

LGBT Committee, for example drafting a

position paper that ultimately guided SALT’s

brief in Christian Legal Society v. Martinez

(2010). Recent non-SALT advocacy includes

amicus briefs before the New Jersey Supreme

Court on marriage equality and on regula-

tory takings. I write in the areas of property

theory, environmental justice, law and

sexuality, and place and identity.

I would like to rejoin the SALT board

because American legal education is in

crisis. SALT has been in the forefront of chal-

lenging the structure of legal education for

excluding minorities, the poor, and women;

and for conceptualizing and teaching law in

a way that serves the rich and minimizes is-

sues and skills important to progressive legal

practice. Nowadays, legal education faces

additional challenges. It costs too much

relative to job prospects. Tenure is mistaken-

ly viewed as an inappropriate organizational

structure. The value of progressive scholar-

ship is questioned. SALT is taking the lead in

these struggles, too. I welcome the opportu-

nity to work on them through SALT.

Two other areas are important to me.

We sometimes overlook the particular op-

portunities and challenges faced by those

at religiously-afﬁliated law schools. There

is special work to be done here. Also, legal

practice is extraordinarily challenging for

many; the legal profession faces an epidemic

of burnout and addiction. Moreover, in a

world where legal practice seems to be in

permanent upheaval, individual resilience is

key. Legal education needs to address head-

on these issues of balance. I will be recog-

nized as a lay Zen teacher in August 2011. I

lecture to lawyers and others about contem-

plative practice, and I advise an ongoing

interfaith meditation group at Seton Hall. I

will bring this perspective on legal education

to the Board.

Drucilla Stender Ramey,

Golden Gate University School

of Law (new candidate)

Candidate Statements,

continued on page 6

Candidate Statements

▼ continued from page 4

www.saltlaw.org

SALT Equalizer

Page 6

September 2011

Sara Rankin,

Seattle University School

of Law (new candidate)

Thank you for consider-

ing me for a position on the

SALT Board of Governors. I feel fortunate

to have served on SALT’s Subcommittee on

accreditation as it relates to bar passage

and admissions. I am deeply committed to

SALT’s mission of inclusion and excellence

in legal education. Before my legal career,

I earned a M.Ed. from the Harvard Gradu-

ate School of Education, where I focused on

education reform. As a practicing lawyer, I

devoted signiﬁcant time to pro bono work for

indigent populations and developed training

programs for young lawyers who also wished

to serve these communities. I specialized

in seeking asylum for immigrant women

and children on the basis of gender perse-

cution. Over the course of ten years, I won

several awards for pro bono service, but more

importantly, I learned a great deal from the

clients I served and the young attorneys I su-

pervised in the process. At the Seattle Univer-

sity School of Law, I have served on several

committees that align with SALT’s mission,

including the Social Justice Committee, the

Curriculum and Pedagogy Committee, and

the PILF Summer Grant Committee.

My scholarship also supports SALT’s

mission: I recently wrote an article exam-

ining the social and political aspects of

legal education reform, and am currently

researching two new articles relating to the

inclusion of homelessness as a protected

category under state hate crime statutes and

Medicaid coverage for sexual reassignment

surgery. I hope to further my dedication to

SALT’s mission through a position on the

Board of Governors.

Avi Soifer,

University of Hawai’i School

of Law (re-election)

It truly is a pleasure to

report that I have been dean

and professor at the William S. Richardson

School of Law at the University of Hawai’i

since 2003. I previously taught at the

University of Connecticut, Boston University,

and Boston College, where I was dean from

1993-1998. My teaching and writing are

primarily about constitutional law, legal

history, cultural studies, and civil rights and

civil liberties.

I have been an active member of SALT

virtually from its start, and a Board member

since 1982. I helped to initiate and organize

the annual Robert Cover Public Interest

Conference and the Study Group and I have

chaired and served on a number of differ-

ent committees. Until recently, I was also in

charge of the annual Salary Survey and I

served on the Executive Committee. This all

has been done with a great deal of help from

my friends, and SALT has been a vital source

of wonderful friendships and assistance.

SpearIt,

Saint Louis University School

of Law (new candidate)

With humility I submit my

candidacy statement for the

Board of Governors. As a newcomer to the

law teaching profession, I am awestruck to

be considered for this position. Although I

am new to the legal academy, I ﬁrst became

a university teaching assistant in 1999 and

began instructing university courses in 2003.

During this time I taught bright minds at

places like Harvard and Berkeley and even

brighter ones at a maximum security, death

row prison. This experience has made me

a lifelong student of teaching and taught

me that teaching excellence is an ongoing

process, not some goal to be attained.

If selected for the Board, I would use

these lessons to forward SALT’s mission of

diversifying law schools, fostering excellent

teaching, and serving underserved com-

munities. As a regular contributor to the

SALT blog, I offer critical insight on issues

which concern our organization. These

efforts largely form the basis of my nomina-

tion. Election to the Board, however, would

allow me to increase the scope of my work

and serve SALT in other critical areas. I am

particularly suited for this position since I

represent offspring of SALT’s efforts. In fact,

members of our organization have been

encouraging and supporting me ever since

I ﬁrst attended a SALT workshop at LatCrit

back in 2004—two full years before I even

started attending law school. Your vote

would allow me to step up my efforts and

continue repaying this favor.

Deleso Washington,

Florida A & M University

School of Law (new candidate)

I am truly honored to have

been nominated to serve on

SALT’s Board of Governors. At Florida A&M

University College of Law, I teach Torts, Race

and Law, Bioethics and the Law and Critical

Race Theory. My teaching methodology and

legal scholarship exemplify the core values

of SALT. I am dedicated to increasing minor-

ity representation in the legal profession on

a daily basis. It is my personal mission to

acknowledge alternate realities and create

new paradigms that center the historically

marginalized by utilizing narrative and

deconstructive techniques to teach substan-

tive areas of law. Currently, I am advocating

for the integration of critical race feminist

theory into medical school curriculum.

My legal and community service

include: Moderator for NBA Law Professors

Div., “Countering the Crisis in Law School

Admissions”(2011); National Steering Com.

Member for the Third National People of

Color Legal Scholarship Conference (2010)

Candidate Statements,

continued on page 7

Candidate Statements

▼ continued from page 5

www.saltlaw.org

SALT Equalizer

Page 7

September 2011

of Law will be hosting the Chicago-based

“Breaking In” program at John Marshall.

In addition to a discussion of hiring from

the dean’s perspective featuring Dean John

Corkery, Dean Jennifer Rosato, and Anthony

Niedwiecki, moderated by Elvia Arriola, pan-

elists included Allison Bethel, Rogelio Lasso,

Jeanna Hunter, Kim Chanbonpin, Yolanda

King, Olympia Duhart, Margaret Kwoka,

SpearIt, and Morse Tan. Many thanks to Kim

Chanbonpin, Yolanda King, and Olympia

Duhart for organizing this program.

Do you want your school to host a

“Breaking In” program? Contact Hari Osof-

sky, co-chair of the New Teachers’ Pipeline

Committee, at [email protected].

and Second National People of Color Legal

Scholarship Conference (2004); Planning

Com. Member for Southeast Southwest

People of Color Legal Scholarship Confer-

ences (2005-2011).

SALT’s dynamic committee work on

Issues In Legal Education is of particular

interest to me and the achievement of my

goal to be a change agent through service.

My most recent scholarly endeavor explores

legal education’s duty to graduate “cultur-

ally competent lawyers” in a diverse society.

I am examining law school’s mission output

in order to redeﬁne traditional notions of

meritocracy. This research not only informs

my classroom teaching but provides an

opportunity to engage in meaningful service

that advances social justice.

sion to host a “Breaking In” program at

the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism.

The day-long program featured the unique

voices and stories of Deborah Archer, Kirk

Buckhalter, Natalie Gomez-Velez, Donna

Lee, Julie Lim, Shirley Lung, Arshad Majid,

Patricia Murrell, and Ediberto Roman.

Many thanks to Pamela Edwards and Dean

Michelle Anderson for their contributions to

the program.

In the article below, SALT board member

Hope Lewis describes the “Breaking In” pro-

gram held at Northeastern University School

of Law this summer. And on September 16,

in Chicago, SALT, John Marshall Law School,

and Northern Illinois University College

Breaking In: Committed to Diversity in the Legal Academy

Hazel Weiser, Executive Director, SALT

Candidate Statements

▼ continued from page 6

With a stalled economy, the popularity of

seeking a legal education seems to be falling

off the charts with numerous articles using

a cost-beneﬁt analysis to turn many away

from the law. However, we cannot abandon

our commitment to diversity in the legal

profession and in the legal academy – espe-

cially now, when we need more civic leaders

to possess the analytical and strategic leader-

ship that a legal education can provide.

SALT remains committed to our mission of

bringing distinct voices and perspectives into

legal education equipped with a disciplined

anti-subordination lens. We invite SALT

members to partner with us to organize this

year’s “Breaking In: How to Become a Law

Professor or Law School Administrator”

programs.

We were busy over the summer. In June,

SALT partnered with CUNY Law School and

its Center for Diversity in the Legal Profes-

SALT and Northeastern Host Well-Received “Breaking

Into Law Teaching” Program

Hope Lewis, Northeastern University School of Law

Just in time to prepare for the fall faculty recruitment season, SALT co-sponsored “Breaking

into Law Teaching: New England” – another event in SALT’s pipeline to the legal academy

series. The workshop, held on Friday, June 17, 2011, at co-sponsor Northeastern University

School of Law, allowed participants to get ready for this fall’s faculty recruitment market.

The workshop, held on Northeastern’s campus in Boston, brought together aspiring law

teachers and administrators with full-time faculty, law librarians, deans, and hiring com-

mittee chairs. Like other regional workshops, the event aimed to encourage lawyers from

underserved or underrepresented communities (racial minorities, women, LGBT, and persons

with disabilities) to consider law teaching.

The gathering of about 40 people from New England involved a great day of informal

networking, discussion, and learning about the faculty appointments process.

Keith Aoki Mentorship Award recipient Jenny Rivera, Professor of Law and Director,

Center on Latino and Latina Rights and Equality at CUNY School of Law, served as luncheon

keynote speaker. She gave an encouraging, candid, and inspiring talk about the preparation

necessary to succeed as a law teacher and shared strategies for overcoming challenges and

barriers to entry or retention. Most importantly, she urged listeners to bring their passion and

commitment for social justice into all aspects of law teaching.

Other panels and participants included:

Why Law Teaching? Expectations and Opportunities

• Libby Adler, Professor of Law, Northeastern University School of Law

Breaking Into Law Teaching Program, continued on page 8

www.saltlaw.org

SALT Equalizer

Page 8

September 2011

• Frank Rudy Cooper, Professor of Law, Suffolk University Law School

• Stacey L. Dogan, Professor of Law, Boston University School of Law

Deans and Hiring Committee Members Tell All

• Lee Breckenridge, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Professor of Law,

Northeastern University School of Law

• James Hackney, Professor of Law and Director, Faculty Research, Northeastern

University School of Law

• Camille Nelson, Dean and Professor of Law, Suffolk University Law School

• Emily A. Spieler, Dean and Hadley Professor of Law, Northeastern University

School of Law

• Alfred C. Yen, Professor of Law and Director, Emerging Enterprises and Business Law

Program, Boston College Law School

Taking the Plunge: The Nuts and Bolts of Applying

• Aziza Ahmed, Assistant Professor of Law, Northeastern University School of Law

• Margaret A. Burnham, Professor of Law and Director, Civil Rights & Restorative Justice

Clinic, Northeastern University School of Law

• Hope Lewis, Professor of Law, Northeastern University School of Law

• Elizabeth Trujillo, Associate Professor of Law, Suffolk University Law School

• Hazel Weiser, Executive Director, Society of American Law Teachers

Hope Lewis, a member of SALT’s Board of Governors and of the New Law Teachers’ Pipe-

line committee, chaired the workshop. The Resource Guides and workshop program can be

found here at http://www.saltlaw.org/contents/view/breakingin.

Thanks to all the organizers and participants!

B.A. to J.D. Pipeline Initiative: November Conference on Diversifying the Legal Profession

Solangel Maldonado, Seton Hall University School of Law

We are all concerned by the recent decline

in the percentage of African-American and

Mexican-American students admitted to law

school and the low admission rates of other

underrepresented minorities. A shocking 61%

of African-American applicants are rejected

by every law school to which they apply, as

compared to 46% of Mexican-American ap-

plicants and 34% of white applicants. (Dis-

turbing Trend in Law School Admissions,

Chart 6). Law schools’ overreliance on the

LSAT, minority students’ lack of relationships

with pre-law college counselors, transcripts

with few college courses that develop strong

writing and analytical skills, students’

unrealistic choices of targeted law schools,

and submission of law school applications at

the end of the admissions cycle all combine

to create a disproportionately high shut-out

rate for students of color.

SALT has partnered with The Ronald H.

Brown Center for Civil Rights and Economic

Development at St. John’s University School

of Law, the Dean’s Diversity Council at Seton

Hall University School of Law, and the Center

for Diversity in the Legal Profession at City

University of New York School of Law to

increase the pipeline and diversify the legal

profession. We have created a new initiative

titled “B.A. to J.D. Pipeline: Diversifying the

Breaking Into Law Teaching Program, ▼ continued from page 7

Legal Profession” to educate bar exam ad-

ministrators, law school admissions ofﬁcers,

and pre-law college advisors about the barri-

ers that students of color face when prepar-

ing for, applying to, and gaining admission

to law school. The initiative will examine the

negative impact that the U.S. News & World

Report rankings have on the admission of

students of color and explore how the rank-

ings can be reformed to be more inclusive of

diversity. It will also work with the regional

and national organizations of pre-law col-

lege advisors to develop model counseling

techniques upon which advisers can rely

when advising students of color.

We are currently planning a day-long

interactive conference and workshop at St.

John’s University School of Law on Novem-

ber 11, 2011. The ﬁrst part of the conference

will demonstrate how the LSAT and the U.S.

News & World Report rankings negatively

affect the admission of students of color

and will explore potential reforms. I am

especially looking forward to the second

part of the conference, which will include

interactive sessions on cultural competency

and counseling of students of color. While

the audience for this conference is local

area bar examiners and administrators,

law school admissions ofﬁcers, and pre-law

college advisors, we hope to see many SALT

members there.

After the conference, we plan to take

this program on the road and participate in

the annual national and regional pre-law

advisors’ conferences in 2012 and 2013. We

also plan to broadly distribute our materials

promoting model counseling techniques

for students of color to pre-law counselors

nationwide.

We are indebted to Professor Leonard

Baynes, Director of The Ronald H. Brown

Pipeline Initiative,

continued on page 9

www.saltlaw.org

SALT Equalizer

Page 9

September 2011

Center for Civil Rights and Economic De-

velopment at St. John’s University School of

Law, and Professor Pamela Edwards, Director

of the Center for Diversity in the Legal Pro-

fession at City University of New York School

of Law, for their efforts on this initiative, and

to our fearless leader Hazel Weiser, SALT’s

Executive Director and the visionary behind

this project. If you have any suggestions for

the B.A. to J.D. Pipeline, please let me

([email protected]) know.

leaving behind a wife and two children and

a lasting legacy of scholarship, service and

teaching true to the values and attributes of

SALT. He will be missed, but at the dinner on

the Saturday night of the AALS conference,

the memory of his life and work will provide

an inspiring reference point

for SALT to launch into its

agenda for the new year.

With the dinner’s loca-

tion on the George Washing-

ton University campus less

than a mile away from the

White House, the coming

elections in 2012, as well

as the role that SALT might

play in those debates, will

surely be a topic of conver-

sation. The dinner will also

provide the opportunity to

reﬂect on changes in the

leadership of SALT as we

offer hearty congratulations

and thanks to our outgo-

ing co-presidents, Raquel

Aldana and Steven Bender,

and give our best wishes

to our new co-presidents,

Jackie Gardina and Ngai Pindell. As usual,

we will recap the highlights of the past year

and the work ahead.

As it is every year, the success of the din-

ner will be measured by the many new and

renewing law schools that support SALT as

platinum or gold sponsoring institutions.

The list of schools currently sponsoring the

dinner is shown in the inset of this article.

We are very grateful to all the sponsoring

schools, but especially grateful to the plati-

num sponsors who receive special recognition

at the dinner and on the website, besides the

table for ten and the full-page ad in the din-

ner journal. For schools interested in touting

their school’s accomplishments, the plati-

num sponsorship offers great visibility, while

at the same time supporting SALT’s work.

A very important way for non-sponsoring

schools and individuals to support SALT is to

place ads in the dinner journal. The dinner

journal is distributed to all attendees of the

dinner, which this year should be ﬁlled with

moving tributes to Keith Aoki, and serves

as a reminder of the honoree and all those

who stand behind him. In Keith’s case, the

journal will contain not only tributes from

family, friends and colleagues, but also from

the many students who were beneﬁciaries of

his great teaching.

The setting for the dinner at the Cafritz

Center at GWU with a unionized caterer

ﬁts with SALT’s values and should provide

a wonderful and accessible setting for the

dinner guests. We are anticipating that the

dinner will be sold out, even with a cap on

the number of institutional sponsorships

that we are selling. Thus, please get your

tickets as soon as possible. We also hope that

you encourage your friends and colleagues

to get their tickets and ads well before the

deadline of December 2.

As always, the dinner would not occur

without the tireless work of Hazel Weiser

and Elizabeth Luzzi in the SALT ofﬁce, and

the committee that I have the privilege of

chairing, consisting of Margaret Barry, Steve

Bender, Patti Falk and Peter Joy. Please email

me (ruben.garcia@unlv.edu) if you have

any questions or suggestions for us!

Great Teacher Keith Aoki’s Legacy to be Celebrated at 2012 SALT Dinner

Ruben Garcia, UNLV Boyd School of Law

Anticipation is building for the 2012 SALT

Annual Dinner in Washington, D.C., on

January 7. The choice of the late Professor

Keith Aoki as the 2012 Great Teacher award

recipient will give the evening a reﬂective

tone. Professor Aoki passed away in April,

Pipeline Initiative,

▼ continued from page 8

Ruben Garcia

www.saltlaw.org

SALT Equalizer

Page 10

September 2011

SALT intends to continue its support for the

Richmond litigation when it is argued in

November; its amicus brief will argue that

indigent defendants’ constitutional right to

counsel extends to an accused’s ﬁrst appear-

ance before a judicial ofﬁcer.

Should you have information, ideas

and/or suggestions for the AJC, please

contact any of the members: Elvia Arriola,

Margaret Barry, Barbara Bernier, Steven

Bender, Pamela Bridgewater (co-chair), Ann

Cammett, Doug Colbert (co-chair), Tracy

Curtis, Camille Nelson, Karla McKanders,

and Adele Morrison.

Lawyers’ responsibility, or its neglect, to

make justice accessible to all is at the heart

of the current housing, budget, health, crim-

inal justice, immigration, environmental

and food security crises. In fact, according to

the Preamble, paragraphs 1, 6 of the Model

Rules of Professional Conduct, lawyers must

be more than useful in a time of crisis and

should abide by our ethical responsibility as

“public citizens.” The ethical rules remind

lawyers that they have special responsibili-

ties to the quality of justice. This includes

lawyers’ professional obligation to represent

people who cannot afford a private attorney.

(Model Rule 6.1). The Model Rules also

include lawyers’ obligation to address “de-

ﬁciencies” such as denying access to justice

for people who cannot afford counsel (“the

poor and those not so poor”). Preamble,

paragraphs 1, 6.

Recognizing the critical role legal educa-

tion plays preparing lawyers to meet their

obligations as public citizens with special

responsibilities to the quality of justice,

and aware of the existing crisis in people’s

lack of access to counsel, SALT formed

the Access to Justice Committee (AJC) last

January 2010. The Committee, led by Doug

Colbert (Maryland) and his new co-chair,

Pamela Bridgewater (American), is com-

mitted to bringing life and meaning to the

words of the Preamble of the Model Rules

into faculty’s central mission of preparing

students for entry to the profession. Access to

Justice members explore ways that faculty

can integrate in their classes a lawyer’s

professional responsibility to public service,

and inform students that few lawyers are

fulﬁlling their pro bono duty (at most, only

one out of ﬁve), despite the overwhelming

need for legal representation in underserved

populations.

AJC’s educational work over the past 18

months has focused on scholarly activities

aimed at making colleagues aware of a

lawyer’s ethical duties. Phase one includes

a survey of law school literature and online

presence to ascertain how access to justice

issues are represented to law school stu-

dents and the public. The committee is also

participating in a summer assignment that

requires members to describe the opportuni-

ties and challenges to incorporate access to

justice issues into two courses that we teach.

The assignment provides much needed

insight into implementation strategies used

by colleagues, as well as an opportunity for

the Committee to share ideas for connecting

a lawyer’s special responsibility values into

coursework across the curriculum.

Committee members intend to post

their ideas on the SALT website. That way,

colleagues teaching the same course can

consider and suggest other ways for includ-

ing the ethics material into their classes and

initiating discussion of a lawyer’s ethical

duty in public service. The next phase of the

project will broaden the scope of the inquiry

to include colleagues at our home institu-

tions and beyond.

We hope you will join AJC’s work. Please

send your ideas for incorporating a lawyer’s

pro bono and public citizen obligations to

address an ongoing deﬁciency in courses

you teach about an ongoing deﬁciency in

the civil or criminal legal system. Agree to

contribute to the AJC website, should you be

contacted about your courses.

This summer, the SALT Board also

approved AJC’s efforts to organize support

for amicus participation in a pending class

action, indigents’ right to counsel at ﬁrst

appearance suit, Richmond v. District

Court of Maryland. AJC’s co-chair and SALT

board member Doug Colbert is fully familiar

with Richmond, having been co-counsel

when it was briefed and argued before the

Maryland Court of Appeals in January, 2009.

Access to Justice Committee: Progress, Projects, and a New Co-Chair

Doug Colbert, University of Maryland School of Law, and Pamela Bridgewater, American University Washington College of Law

www.saltlaw.org

SALT Equalizer

Page 11

September 2011

describe eligibility for military beneﬁts

continue to deﬁne spouse as an opposite sex

partner. While the service members may no

longer be “serving in silence,” their families

will continue to be invisible.

Historically, the military has been slow

to make change. In 1948, President Tru-

man issued an executive order integrating

the services, yet some branches resisted for

years and racial tensions remained palpable

for decades. The military has been even

slower to integrate women and, sadly, sexual

harassment remains a serious problem

within the services. Whether gay and lesbian

service members will face similar obstacles

is another unknown. The Pentagon has

yet to release the new regulations that will

govern the post-repeal service branches and

consequently there remain a number of

unanswered questions about how they will

be treated.

Finally, repeal does not affect the mili-

tary’s discrimination against transgender

individuals under its medical regulations.

The military may disqualify a transgender

candidate if the potential service member

has had any type of genital surgery. Even

if the individual has not had surgery but

openly identiﬁes as transgender, the military

considers this to be a disqualifying psychi-

atric condition. While it is possible to obtain

a medical waiver, there is no evidence that a

waiver has ever been granted for a transgen-

der person.

SALT will continue to be vigilant about

these issues. We will join other organizations

in encouraging President Obama to issue an

executive order prohibiting discrimination

based on sexual orientation in the military.

At this writing, the AALS has not lifted its

amelioration requirements and it appears

premature to do so in the absence of the

Pentagon’s regulations. Even if the AALS

lifts the requirement, SALT will continue to

encourage law schools to engage in ame-

liorative actions including educating their

gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender law

students about the remaining obstacles as-

sociated with military service.

But on September 20, we will also cel-

ebrate this small step towards full equality.

LGBT Committee: What Does Repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell Really Mean?

Jackie Gardina, Vermont Law School

On September 20, 2011, almost eighteen

years after Congress enshrined discrimina-

tion based on sexual orientation into the

federal code, Don’t Ask Don’t Tell will be

ofﬁcially repealed. It will certainly be a day

of celebration for the tens of thousands of

service members who are currently serving

in silence and a vindication for those who

were discharged under this discriminatory

law. SALT was an active participant in repeal

efforts. We were a named plaintiff in FAIR v.

Rumsfeld; our members petitioned Congress

through letters, calls, and direct lobbying;

we encouraged President Obama to take

direct action to end the discrimination; and

each year we reminded law schools of their

amelioration responsibilities.

Unfortunately, our work is not done.

“The Don’t Ask Don’t Tell Repeal Act of

2010” was a sharp departure from the origi-

nal bill introduced into Congress in 2005.

That bill would have, among other things,

prohibited the military from discriminat-

ing based on sexual orientation. During

negotiations, however, Congress struck the

non-discrimination provision from the bill.

The provision’s absence creates the pos-

sibility that service members could still be

discriminated against based on their real or

perceived sexual orientation. The Pentagon

has stated explicitly that it does not consider

sexual orientation a protected class and that

it will not alter its Military Equal Opportu-

nity policy to include afﬁrmative protections

for gay and lesbian service members.

Moreover, there are other laws that leave

full equality unrealized. Article 125 of the

USMJ still makes sodomy a criminal offense.

Whether it will become a proxy for Don’t Ask

Don’t Tell remains an unknown. Married

gay and lesbian service members will not be

eligible for many of the beneﬁts available to

their heterosexual counterparts. The Defense

of Marriage Act and other federal laws that

www.saltlaw.org

SALT Equalizer

Page 12

September 2011

ment of standards that require schools to

expand and broaden their assessment strate-

gies and to more fully integrate instruction

in doctrine, skills, theory and professional-

ism. Many of those suggestions have been

adopted by the subcommittee working on the

proposed Outcome Measures standards. SALT

believes that the proposed change to raise

the bar pass rate undercuts the work done on

Outcome Measures and subverts the goal of

having schools take seriously their obliga-

tion to teach and assess students in a wider

range of skills and with a variety of methods.

As the SALT statement noted, “One cannot

press schools to broaden how and what they

teach and assess and, at the same time, say

that the one thing that really matters – the

only thing measured by a bright-line stan-

dard – is whether students can answer mul-

tiple choice and short essay exam questions

that assess a narrow range of the knowledge

and skills new lawyers need.”

In its comments to the SRC, SALT also

argued that the proposed increase in the

minimum bar pass rates will affect the law

schools that are most committed to diver-

sifying the profession and that have been

willing to accept and educate students who

do not have strong predictors of bar passage.

Law school diversity has already declined

and this proposed change is likely to result

in further acceleration of that problematic

development. As SALT noted, the “threat to

the profession’s diversity is the main reason

why, three years ago, the ABA Council chose

a cumulative pass rate of 75% rather than an

80% pass rate. No evidence has been offered

to support a different decision now.”

For a full text of the statement, go to

http://www.saltlaw.org/userﬁles/7-6-11

SALTInterpretation301-6.pdf.

Starting with the spring meeting of

the ABA Council, Issues in Legal Educa-

Over the summer, the Issues in Legal Educa-

tion Committee continued its work monitor-

ing and commenting on the proposals being

considered by the Standards Review Com-

mittee (SRC) of the ABA Section on Legal

Education and Admissions to the Bar to

revise the ABA law school accreditation stan-

dards. As part of that work, the committee

submitted a statement opposing a proposal

to increase the bright-line bar examination

pass rate required to retain accreditation.

Currently, the accreditation standards

require a law school to produce informa-

tion on at least 70% of its graduates and

demonstrate either that over the past ﬁve

years 75% of them ultimately pass the bar

exam or that its ﬁrst-time bar exam takers

pass at a rate no more than 15% lower than

the blended bar pass rate in the reported

states for persons who graduated from ABA

accredited law schools. The proposed change

would raise the overall pass rate requirement

to 80% and no more than a 10% differential.

SALT opposes this change because increasing

the bar pass rate requirements would present

a serious threat to the academy’s diversity

efforts and is inconsistent with the SRC effort

to have schools expand and broaden their

assessment strategies to include the full

range of student learning outcomes. If the

bright-line bar pass rate is raised, the law

schools most committed to diversifying the

profession may be forced to cut back on their

efforts to educate those with lower predic-

tors, and all schools will be encouraged to

rely more heavily on the bright-line bar

pass statistics and less heavily on develop-

ing assessment strategies for other learning

outcomes.

Since the beginning of the standards

review effort, the SALT Issues in Legal Educa-

tion Committee has submitted numerous

comments in support of the SRC’s develop-

tion Committee member Olympia Duhart

replaced Eileen Kaufman as the SALT liaison

to the ABA Council; incoming SALT Co-Pres-

ident Ngai Pindell substituted for her at the

summer Council meeting. Carol Chomsky

will continue attending the SRC meetings

for the upcoming year. The continuing

attendance of SALT representatives at the

quarterly Council and SRC meetings ensures

that SALT’s voice is considered in these

important deliberations. Although SALT and

other afﬁliate organizations are not direct

participants in the drafting process, the

formal and informal comments contributed

by SALT’s representatives and others have

had a notable impact on the discussions

and decisions regarding the accreditation

standards. The work of all those who have

helped convey SALT’s perspective to the ABA

Council and Standards Review Committee is

deeply appreciated.

Issues in Legal Education Committee: Continuing Work on Pending

ABA Accreditation Standards

Andi Curcio, Georgia State University College of Law, and Carol Chomsky, University of Minnesota Law School

www.saltlaw.org

SALT Equalizer

Page 13

September 2011

SALT joined 26 other civil and human rights

organizations in signing onto an amicus

brief in support of the Hispanic Interest

Coalition of Alabama’s motion for prelimi-

nary injunction against Alabama Governor

Robert Bentley to prevent the operation of

Alabama’s HB 56, ofﬁcially known as the

Beason-Hammon “Alabama Taxpayer and

Citizen Protection Act.” This Act is very

similar to Arizona’s SB 1070.

HB 56 empowers Alabama law enforce-

ment ofﬁcials to take action against an indi-

vidual who arouses a “reasonable suspicion”

that he or she is “unlawfully present” in the

United States. Although the Act speciﬁes that

law enforcement “may not consider race,

color or national origin” in the enforcement

of the law “except to the extent permitted by

the United States Constitution and the Con-

stitution of Alabama of 1901,” the Act actu-

ally requires ofﬁcers to do just that. There is

no way for even the most well-meaning law

enforcement ofﬁcial to determine whether

an individual is possibly undocumented

without making judgments based on appar-

ent race, color and national origin. Ofﬁcers

will necessarily depend on the individual’s

ethnicity, skin color, facial features, accent,

dress, or some other physical attribute.

Moreover, Alabama legislators have acknowl-

edged that the statute was designed to target

a speciﬁc ethnic group: Hispanics.

Citizenship is not easily ascertainable.

It depends on many factors, including the

parents’ citizenship, the duration and timing

of their residence in the United States, their

marital status at the time of the person’s

birth, the year in which the individual was

born, the place where the person was born,

and possibly the date on which a child born

out of wedlock was legitimated. None of

these factors can be determined in a brief

detention in order to constitute reasonable

suspicion of unlawful presence.

Human Rights Committee: SALT Signs Amicus Brief Against Alabama Racial Proﬁling Law

Marjorie Cohn, Thomas Jefferson School of Law

Arizona Governor Janice Brewer, who

signed SB 1070 into law, was asked what

criteria will be used to determine reasonable

suspicion that a person is not lawfully in the

United States. She answered, “I do not know

what an illegal immigrant looks like.”

The Alabama Act creates a crime of guilt

by association so that any person who as-

sociates with someone perceived as possibly

undocumented can be interrogated, detained

and/or arrested. The new law criminalizes

the harboring and transporting of undocu-

mented persons, thus making it a crime

to give an undocumented person a ride to

church or the hospital. It also makes it a

crime to allow an undocumented person to

reside in one’s home.

On July 28, 2010, United States District

Court Judge Susan Bolton issued a prelimi-

nary injunction enjoining enforcement, on

preemption grounds, of four sections of SB

1070. They include the provision that would

require ofﬁcers to attempt to determine the

immigration status of those lawfully stopped

if the ofﬁcer has a reasonable suspicion the

detainee is unlawfully present in the United

States. Arizona ﬁled an interlocutory appeal

to the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals,

which held that the United States demon-

strated a likelihood of success on the merits

of its claims that federal law preempts the

veriﬁcation requirement, as well as provi-

sions that make it a state crime for unau-

thorized aliens to violate federal registration

laws, that criminalize work by unauthorized

aliens, and that permit police ofﬁcers to

effect warrantless arrests based on probable

cause of civil removability from the United

States.

Like SB 1070, HB 56 actually threatens

public safety by providing a major disin-

centive for communities of color to report

crimes, including and especially hate crimes,

lest they subject themselves to scrutiny by

law enforcement.

Moreover, the Inter-American Commis-

sion on Human Rights issued a report urg-

ing “federal and local authorities to refrain

from passing laws that use criminal offenses

to criminalize immigration, and from

developing administrative or other practices

that violate the fundamental principle of

nondiscrimination and the immigrants’

rights to due process of law, personal liberty,

and humane treatment.” The Commission

also “underscored the need to ﬁnd appropri-

ate ways to amend the law recently enacted

in Arizona to adapt it to international hu-

man rights standards for the protection of

immigrants.”

During the coming period, the Human

Rights Committee will monitor and hope-

fully weigh in on issues involving assaults on

civil liberties and human rights. They will

likely include immigration matters as well

as torture in U.S. prisons such as California’s

Pelican Bay State Prison, where inmates

have been on a hunger strike to protest being

held for decades in solitary conﬁnement,

which amounts to torture. We encourage any

interested SALT members to join the Human

Rights Committee.

www.saltlaw.org

SALT Equalizer

Page 14

September 2011

A New School Year Means It’s Time to Renew Your SALT Membership

Hazel Weiser, Executive Director, SALT

Last spring, the SALT Board of Governors

voted to restructure membership levels to tie

dues to position within the academy rather

than income. In addition, there are some in-

creases in dues, with the need to move SALT

toward becoming a self-sustaining member-

ship organization. We were privileged to

have had four years of unrestricted general

support funding from the Open Society Insti-

tute. That funding permitted SALT to create

a national ofﬁce, hire professional staff,

redesign its website, develop new marketing

materials, improve communications with

members, and raise the visibility and con-

sequently the inﬂuence of the organization

within the academy and beyond. We are very

grateful to the Open Society Institute for its

support. However, that funding is now over

and with the current economic downturn,

it’s difﬁcult to ﬁnd general operating support

for an organization whose primary goals are

focused on legal education. Yes, we have an

activist social justice agenda, but our inﬂu-

ence remains mostly within the academy.

In addition to changing the membership

dues structure, we also began our member-

ship drive earlier in the summer to encour-

age lapsed SALT members to renew their

commitment to the organization. We have a

lot to accomplish this year, so we wanted the

membership drive to be consolidated into the

early months of the academic year, freeing

our efforts to work on better communication

with our members. We have resurrected the

SALT reps program to help accomplish this

objective.

Over the summer, we sent out more than

250 emails to selected SALT members, both

current and lapsed, at the 200 ABA approved

law schools and those with provisional

status, asking them if they would serve as

SALT reps at their institutions. If you received

one of these emails, please respond so that

we can activate the SALT reps system to work

to the beneﬁt of our members, and address

the many issues that will be arising as the

last year of the comprehensive review of the

standards governing law schools begins.

What Do SALT Reps Do?

• Encourage colleagues who are interested

in social justice, diversity, and academic

excellence to join SALT and renew their

membership annually.

• Keep colleagues at your school informed

about SALT’s activities and initiatives

and promote participation. The weekly

electronic newsletter makes being a SALT

rep easier than ever.

• Convey to the SALT Board your colleagues’

concerns and relevant issues as they arise

at your school.

• Propose policies and programs for adop-

tion by the SALT Board.

• Make recommendations for suitable can-

didates for election to the SALT Board.

• Encourage public interest-oriented

students to attend SALT’s regional public

interest/social justice retreats.

• Facilitate participation of your law school

in SALT’s Annual Salary Survey.

Contact Hazel Weiser at hweiser@salt-

law.org if you want to be a SALT rep. We want

to especially open SALT membership up to

legal writing, academic support, and adjunct

professors, who often long for professional

development opportunities. We are serious

about moving SALT membership to new

heights this year.

New Membership Levels:

Please review the new membership levels

and choose the appropriate one based upon

your position within the legal academy.

Fellows and visiting $ 55

assistant professors:

Adjunct faculty and $ 75

retired teachers:

Non-tenure track faculty, $ 100

librarians, academic support,

and staff:

Tenure track faculty: $ 125

Tenured faculty and senior $ 150

administrative personnel:

Lifetime, retiring: $1,200

SALT membership is on an academic

year basis. Sign up today and your member-

ship will run through August 31, 2012.

www.saltlaw.org

SALT Equalizer

Page 15

September 2011

SALT Public Interest Retreats: Coming Soon to a Location Near You

Robert Lancaster, Hebert Law Center, Louisiana State University, and Ngai Pindell, UNLV Boyd School of Law

SALT will continue its sponsorship of three

public interest retreats this school year—

one in the Midwest, one in the Northeast,

and one on the West Coast. During these

retreats, law students, faculty and practitio-

ners exchange viewpoints, explore career

opportunities, and formulate strategies

for social justice. The retreats offer public-

interest-minded law school students an

opportunity to meet and network with other

students from around the country—connec-

tions that also provide the foundation for a

professional network to support their public

interest ambitions as their careers develop.

The Norman Amaker Public

Interest Retreat is scheduled for

February 24-26, 2012, at Loyola University’s

Ecology Campus in Woodstock, Illinois.

Professor Emily Benfer at Loyola University-

Chicago School of Law is the lead organizer

of this retreat.

The Robert Cover Public Inter-

est Retreat will be organized by students

at Vermont Law School and will be held in

Peterborough, New Hampshire, the weekend

of March 2-4, 2012.

The Trina Grillo Public Interest

and Social Justice Retreat will be

held at Golden Gate University School of Law

in San Francisco. Professor Michele Neitz

and Leeor Neta are the lead organizers and,

although the date has not been ﬁnalized yet,

it will likely be held either the last weekend

in February or the last weekend in March.

Stay tuned for additional announcements.

SALT 2011-12 Calendar: Enjoy the Benefits of SALT Membership

September 16: Chicago, IL Breaking In: How To Become a Law Professor or Law School Administrator,

co-sponsored by SALT, The John Marshall Law School and Northern Illinois

University College of Law

September 23-24: Seattle, WA Promoting Diversity in Law School Leadership, co-sponsored by SALT, Seattle

University School of Law, Fred T. Korematsu Center for Law & Equality, and

University of Washington School of Law

October 6-7: San Diego, CA SALT-LatCrit Junior Faculty Development Workshop

January 5: Washington, DC Robert Cover Workshop: “The Urgent and Often Ignored Crisis in Political

and Civil Rights: Mass Incarceration in Communities of Color,” at the AALS

Annual Meeting

January 7: Washington, DC SALT Annual Dinner, honoring Keith Aoki as SALT’s Great Teacher

February 24-26: Woodstock, IL Norman Amaker Public Interest Retreat: “Breaking Barriers and Building

Bridges: Public Interest Initiatives for a Better Tomorrow,” hosted by Loyola

University-Chicago School of Law

February or March (dates TBD): Trina Grillo Public Interest and Social Justice Retreat,

San Francisco, CA hosted by Golden Gate University School of Law

March 2-4: Peterborough, NH Robert Cover Public Interest Retreat, organized by the students of Vermont Law

School and co-sponsored by SALT and Yale Law School

Society of American Law Teachers

Co-Presidents

Raquel Aldana (McGeorge)

Steven W. Bender (Seattle)

Past Presidents (in order of service)

Norman Dorsen (NYU)

Howard Lesnick (Pennsylvania)

David L. Chambers (Michigan)

George J. Alexander (Santa Clara)

Wendy W. Williams (Georgetown)

Rhonda D. Rivera (Ohio State)

Emma Coleman Jordan (Georgetown)

Charles R. Lawrence III (Georgetown)

Howard A. Glickstein (Touro)

Sylvia A. Law (NYU)

Patricia A. Cain (Santa Clara)

Jean C. Love (Santa Clara)

Linda S. Greene (Wisconsin)

Phoebe A. Haddon (Maryland)

Stephanie M. Wildman (Santa Clara)

Carol Chomsky (Minnesota)

Margaret E. Montoya (New Mexico)

Paula C. Johnson (Syracuse)

Michael Rooke-Ley (Willamette)

José R. Juárez, Jr. (Denver)

Holly Maguigan (NYU)

Eileen Kaufman (Touro)

Tayyab Mahmud (Seattle)

Margaret Martin Barry (Vermont, visiting)

Deborah Waire Post (Touro)

Past Vice-Presidents

Anthony G. Amsterdam (NYU)

Derrick A. Bell, Jr. (NYU)

Gary Bellow (Harvard)

Ralph S. Brown, Jr. (Yale)

Thomas Emerson (Yale)

Secretary

Robert Lancaster (Louisiana State)

Treasurer

Patricia A. Cain (Santa Clara)

Equalizer Editor

Raleigh Hannah Levine (William Mitchell)

CLEA Liaison

Claudia Angelos (NYU)

Executive Director

Hazel Weiser

Board of Governors

Bryan Adamson (Seattle)

Elvia Arriola (Northern Illinois)

Michael Avery (Suffolk)

Barbara Bernier (Florida A & M)

Marjorie Cohn (Thomas Jefferson)

Doug Colbert (Maryland)

Andi Curcio (Georgia State)

Benjamin Davis (Toledo)

Olympia Duhart (Nova Southeastern)

Patricia Falk (Cleveland-Marshall)

Ruben Garcia (UNLV)

Jackie Gardina (Vermont; Co-President Elect)

Joan Howarth (Dean, Michigan State)

Peter Joy (Washington-St. Louis)

Lawrence C. Levine (McGeorge)

Hope Lewis (Northeastern)

Beth Lyon (Villanova)

Solangel Maldonado (Seton Hall)

Karla McKanders (Tennessee)

Adele Morrison (Wayne State)

Camille Nelson (Dean, Suffolk)

Hari Osofsky (Minnesota)

Ngai Pindell (UNLV; Co-President Elect)

Lisa Pruitt (UC-Davis)

Denise Roy (William Mitchell)

Natsu Taylor Saito (Georgia State)

Mark Sidel (Wisconsin)

Aviam Soifer (Dean, Hawai’i)

William Mitchell College of Law

875 Summit Avenue

Saint Paul, MN 55105-3076

www.wmitchell.edu

SALT Equalizer

Professor Raleigh Hannah Levine, Editor