The Association of American Law Schools (AALS), formed in 1900, is a

non-profit organization A nonprofit organization (NPO) or non-profit organisation, also known as a non-business entity, not-for-profit organization, or nonprofit institution, is a legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public or social benefit, in co ...

of 176 law schools in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

. An additional 19 schools pay a fee to receive services but are not members. AALS incorporated as a 501(c)(3) non-profit educational organization in 1971. The association is a member of both the American Council on Education and the American Council of Learned Societies Its headquarters are in Washington, D.C.

History

In August 1905, a new quarterly law publication was announced in the annual meeting held in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

Henry Wade Rogers Henry Wade Rogers (October 15, 1853 – August 16, 1926) was a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Education and career Born on October 10, 1853, in Holland Patent, New York, Rogers receive ...

, dean of

Yale Law School Yale Law School (Yale Law or YLS) is the law school of Yale University, a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. It was established in 1824 and has been ranked as the best law school in the United States by '' U.S. News & World ...

served as the president and 25 law schools were represented.

Leadership

Erwin Chemerinsky Erwin Chemerinsky (born May 14, 1953) is an American legal scholar known for his studies of United States constitutional law and federal civil procedure. Since 2017, Chemerinsky has been the dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law. Previously, he a ...

, dean of University of California, Berkeley School of Law, became president of AALS on January 8, 2022. The president-elect is Mark Alexander, dean of Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law, and Vincent D. Rougeau, president of the College of the Holy Cross, is the immediate past president. Judith Areen became executive director and chief executive officer of AALS in February 2014. Prior to coming to AALS, Areen was on the faculty of Georgetown University Law Center where she served as dean from 1989 to 2004 and as interim dean in 2010.

Meetings

AALS hosts a number of events throughout the year. The AALS Conference on Clinical Legal Education is the association's second largest conference with the 2015 conference having approximately 700 clinicians in attendance. The conference's sessions focus on practice areas and common areas of concern for clinicians.

Involvement in the Solomon Amendment

The AALS requires its members to follow a nondiscrimination policy regarding "race, color, religion, national origin, sex, age, disability, or sexual orientation," and for member law schools to require this of any employer to which it gives access for recruitment. The

United States Armed Forces The United States Armed Forces are the military forces of the United States. The armed forces consists of six service branches: the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force, Space Force, and Coast Guard. The president of the United States is ...

don't ask, don't tell "Don't ask, don't tell" (DADT) was the official United States policy on military service of non-heterosexual people, instituted during the Clinton administration. The policy was issued under Department of Defense Directive 1304.26 on Decembe ...

" (DADT) policy was seen by the AALS as impermissible discrimination. However, the AALS excused its members from blocking access to the military since the passage of the Solomon Amendment, which denies federal funding to the parent university of a law school as well as the school itself if military recruiters are not given full campus access. However, the AALS at the time required schools to take "ameliorative" measures when allowing military recruiters on campus, including placing "warning" signs on campus when military recruiting takes place, scheduling interviews off campus away from "core" areas, "prohibit ngentirely the delivery of discretionary support services" to military recruiters, charging military employers who use law school resources "reasonable fees for use of law school staff, facilities and services," etc. The AALS at the time encouraged law schools to deny benefits to military recruiters that they would ordinarily provide employers, such as coffee and free parking. Specifically, the AALS wrote in a memo to all law school deans in the United States: The AALS engaged in litigation challenging the Solomon Amendment as violative of the

First Amendment First or 1st is the ordinal form of the number one (#1). First or 1st may also refer to: *World record, specifically the first instance of a particular achievement Arts and media Music * 1$T, American rapper, singer-songwriter, DJ, and reco ...

(see e.g., ''

Rumsfeld v. Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights, Inc. ''Rumsfeld v. Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights, Inc.'', 547 U.S. 47 (2006), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court ruled that the federal government, under the Solomon Amendment, could constitutionally withhold fundin ...

''). In an interesting coincidence, The Judge Advocate General's School of the

United States Army The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, ...

is a fee-paying nonmember of AALS. Although DADT has been ended, and although President Barack Obama called upon college campuses to welcome military recruiters during his 2011 State of the Union address, some law professors have questioned why the AALS has issued no statement declaring an end to its recommendations.DADT Repeal and On-Campus Military Recruiters, PrawfsBlawg, December 24, 2010, http://prawfsblawg.blogs.com/prawfsblawg/2010/12/dadt-repeal-and-on-campus-military-recruiters.html

References

External links