Читать книгу The Transformative Years of the University of Alabama Law School, 1966–1970 - Daniel Meador - Страница 11

The heart of any law school is its faculty. On them depend the nature of the curriculum, the quality of instruction, the general tone of the place, and the school’s reputation. In the academic year 1965–66 there were thirteen full-time faculty at the University of Alabama Law School.[12] Most had been on the faculty for over ten years, several for more than twenty. As I saw the situation from my perch in England, the faculty needed to be enlarged in order to expand and enrich the curriculum and to bring in fresh blood to provide a wider range of perspectives on the law.

As mentioned earlier, the law school’s budget for 1966–67 was substantially increased. That made possible the addition of several faculty positions. Dean Harrison and the faculty agreed that I should be involved in filling those positions. Because my being in England would make it impossible for the faculty and me to participate jointly in this process, I proposed, and they agreed, that I undertake to recruit some visiting professors in Britain, postponing for another year appointments on a more permanent basis. With that in mind, I attended the annual meeting of the Society of Public Teachers of Law, the British counterpart of the AALS, and consulted with some senior law professors I had come to know. The result was that I obtained two visiting teachers from Britain and one from Australia.[13]

When I returned to the states in June I discovered by happenstance that Wythe W. Holt Jr. had just graduated from the law school at Virginia and was interested in teaching. I had known him as an outstanding student since he first entered law school. The upshot was that I recommended him, and the faculty agreed, for appointment as an assistant professor.[14] He was the first appointee of my deanship to a tenure track position. As it turned out, he was also only one of two persons appointed to the faculty during my deanship whose entire career was spent at Alabama. He became an able, well-recognized legal historian.

Having tapped successfully into the British Commonwealth market, over the next three years we attracted two more visiting professors from England[15] and two from Australia.[16] Thus in my time the law school had seven teachers from elsewhere in the common-law world, widening the legal perspective for Alabama students.

After the 1966–67 academic year, a group of the faculty and I regularly attended the annual AALS meeting, something few of the faculty had been doing in past years. A much increased travel budget made this possible. In December 1968, for example, twelve faculty members were at the AALS meeting in New Orleans. Our main purpose was to recruit young law teachers to fill those new positions on a permanent basis. In a hotel room at those meetings we interviewed several dozen prospects each year. We had their resumes in advance and could do some initial screening. We tried to make the case that ours was a law school on the move and that it presented an attractive place to teach and study. Several of our offers were turned down. In the end, over a three-year period we appointed seven new assistant professors[17] and three associate professors.[18] All had strong academic records from some of the nation’s best law schools. Most showed a promising interest in scholarly research.

In addition, I visited several law schools each year, schools that were the main sources of able young law teachers. Competition for top quality was stiff from other law schools. Those recruiting experiences and those at the AALS meetings brought home to me how far the Alabama Law School had to go to be considered by outsiders as in the league with not only the best but also with the very good law schools. It was clear that until we built the school up it was unlikely that we could hope to entice well-established law professors to make a so-called lateral move to join us. Our best hope was to begin at the entry level and work up. We had been fortunate to do as well as we had.

A major impediment to our recruiting efforts was something we could do nothing about—the reputation of the State of Alabama. In the late 1960s, it was bad. This was not primarily a matter of ideology, of liberal or conservative political views. Across the board, Alabama was looked on as being backward, unenlightened, and intensely racist. When I informed friends and acquaintances around the country that I was taking a position at Alabama, there was often a shaking of heads and rolling of eyes. In the face of such a negative image, all we could do was try to convince others that this heightened the challenge and opportunity to build a well-educated and sophisticated legal profession in the state and that the law school was dedicated to that end.

The combination of our new appointments and the visiting professors meant that the teaching strength of the faculty now varied from nineteen to twenty-three, up from thirteen in 1965–66.[19] We also increased the number of adjunct instructors.[20] The larger faculty had significant benefits for the curriculum, as will be mentioned below, and the new appointees injected an invigorating freshness into the intellectual life of the school.

Still more teaching manpower was necessitated by the important curriculum decision to install a required writing and research program for all first-year students. Imparting those basic skills to law students could not be neglected. The regular faculty members were each carrying a full teaching load; most could not also take on an intensive instructional task of that sort. The solution was to appoint each year four young lawyers from major Birmingham law firms to teach writing and research on a part-time basis. Two regular faculty also participated. Thus we were able to divide the first-year class into six sections. Each instructor was responsible for one section. The Birmingham attorneys came over regularly to meet with the students and supervise their work. Over the period of my deanship, a total of eight young lawyers were thus employed.[21] All were graduates of the top law schools in the country. From all accounts, this writing and research program was successful.

University of Alabama Law School Faculty

July 1969 on the steps of Farrah Hall

Front Row: Samuel A. Beatty, Harry Cohen, Dean Daniel J. Meador, John C. Payne, and Visiting Professor Neill H. Alford Jr. from the University of Virginia.Second Row: Guy T. Huthnance, M. Leigh Harrison, M. Clinton McGee, Thomas L. Jones, and Igor I. Kavass. Third Row: Wythe W. Holt Jr., C. Dallas Sands, Richard G. Singer, Phillip J. C. Mahan, Julian B. McDonnell Jr., and W. Taylor Reveley III. Not Pictured: Gerald R Gibbons, Richard M. Goodman, James B. Kobak Jr., Jay W. Murphy, L. Vastine Stabler Jr., and Visiting Professors John F. Bleechmore and Colin F. H. Tapper.