Читать книгу The Transformative Years of the University of Alabama Law School, 1966–1970 - Daniel Meador - Страница 9

In the late summer of 1965, I received a telephone call from Dr. Frank Rose, president of the University of Alabama. He informed me that M. Leigh Harrison would be retiring as dean of the law school the following year. He wondered whether I would be interested in the position. This call was so surprising that I hardly knew what to say. At that time I was on the law faculty at the University of Virginia and not at all anxious to leave. Moreover, my situation was complicated in that I would shortly depart for England with my wife and three children to spend a year as a Fulbright Lecturer. Nevertheless, we agreed to meet in Washington to explore the idea.

At the Mayflower Hotel, we had a lengthy and wide-ranging discussion about the school. What sticks most clearly in my mind is his statement that he intended “to do for the law school what I did for the medical school.” I was familiar with what had been happening at the University of Alabama Medical School in Birmingham in recent years because my brother was on the faculty there. With huge increases in funding and able, progressive leadership, that school had been brought to national recognition. So Dr. Rose’s statement carried a powerful message. If he intended to do the same for the law school, all sorts of possibilities were opened up. He held before me that exciting prospect.

In addition, this was not an offer of just any law school deanship. The University of Alabama was my alma mater. It was home. My roots ran deep in the state, and I had an abiding concern over its future. Also, I was a member of the law school class of 1951, and the opportunity to return as dean was especially attractive. Given all that, along with Frank Rose’s commitments of support, it was probably a foregone conclusion that I would accept the position.

My decision was influenced to an extent by what was happening at the University of Georgia Law School. In January 1964, I had been offered the deanship there. A group of its alumni from major Atlanta law firms had determined to build up their school. They were committed to raising large amounts of money to create endowed professorships, enlarge the library, and add significantly to the building. As one put it, “Harvard would become the Georgia of the North.” Governor Carl Sanders joined the effort and invited me to breakfast at the governor’s mansion to exert maximum persuasion. It was an exciting prospect. In the Deep South for the first time here was an unprecedented effort to pull the region out of its long back seat in legal education and to train a new generation of enlightened leaders. It was tempting. But in the end I turned it down, as I had no ambition to be a dean. I thought that at the University of Virginia I already had one of the finest positions in legal education. At the same time, I had a twinge of guilt over failing to answer this call from my native region. Then along came Alabama, and that was different. To have turned down the deanship there would, I thought, have been to shirk my duty to my home state. There would have been a greater, lasting sense of guilt, more than what I had felt in declining the Georgia opportunity.

The relevance of the Georgia offer is that I thought that if an all-out effort for the state law school was being mounted in Georgia, then a similar development should be possible in Alabama. In my view, success would depend heavily on whether the Alabama law alumni could be motivated like those Atlanta lawyers to provide substantial financial support for their school—something the Alabamians were not accustomed to doing.

Dr. Rose and I reached an understanding that I would assume the deanship the following summer. So, as had been scheduled, I spent the 1965–66 academic year on a Fulbright Lectureship in England. This proved to be both an advantage and disadvantage. It was a disadvantage in that it made it slower and more difficult to communicate with Dean Harrison and the faculty at Tuscaloosa; nevertheless we did carry on helpful correspondence. The advantages were that those months gave me an opportunity to reflect on the situation in the law school—what needed to be done there—in a more detached way than I might have done while actively teaching at Virginia. Also, it gave me access to numerous leading English and Scottish law professors and the opportunity, as will be mentioned later, for unusual faculty recruitment. And it broadened and deepened my understanding of the origins of our legal order, inherited from that cradle of the common law.

Against the background of having been a student in the law school at Alabama from 1948 to 1951, I thought that my experiences since then gave me an understanding of the mainstream of American legal education and a sound basis for analyzing the needs of a high quality law school—a year at the Harvard Law School, eight years on the Virginia law faculty, active participation in annual meetings of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS), and a year amidst English legal institutions. Also, I had served on American Bar Association accreditation committees to evaluate the law schools at Duke and Vanderbilt. I realized, however, that every law school is different and that what should be done at Alabama had to be tailored to the situation there and in conjunction with the faculty.

The 1960s were challenging times for Americans and especially in Alabama. For its future, the state badly needed enlightened, well-educated leaders. Throughout history, much of American leadership, for better or worse, had come from the legal profession, and so it had been in Alabama. This was impressively shown by some figures: at that time law school alumni constituted about 75 percent of the practicing Alabama bar, the entire membership of the state Supreme Court, 80 percent of the trial and appellate judges, 15 of the 35 state senators, 40 of the 106 state representatives, six of the state’s eight congressmen, both U.S. senators, and the governor. The law school was truly the incubator of Alabama’s public leadership. In my mind, strengthening the school and moving it on to more national recognition was important to provide a high quality legal education for the future, which could possibly be the key to giving the state the leadership it should have. I thought of the school as a kind of West Point for the future leaders in Alabama law and government. This gave me a sense of urgency, with no time to waste, when I arrived in Tuscaloosa and became dean on July 1, 1966.

At that time, in the wider world of American legal education the University of Alabama Law School was perceived as being in the company of most other Southern state university law schools, which was to say that it was viewed as more or less respectable though not outstanding. But for nearly a hundred years, as the only accredited law school in the state, the school had been an honored institution in Alabama society, supplying the bulk of the legal profession in Alabama. It had long been accredited by the American Bar Association and a member of the Association of American Law Schools. In the eyes of some observers, however, the school had slipped into what could be described as a state of “insular lethargy.” Despite that image, numerous graduates in the late fifties and early sixties—as well as in years gone by—became outstanding lawyers and public servants, proof that real talent will manifest itself. The school’s perceived status in the American legal education community pained me, and I was determined to do something about it. At the outset, it was essential that I get an accurate and realistic assessment of the situation.

In my student days (1948–51) the school had seemed a livelier place than it did in the summer of 1966. Back then there had been Dean William M. Hepburn, sophisticated and learned, one of my all-time favorite figures in legal education, who left to become dean of the Emory Law School; Herman Trautman, a dramatic teacher of evidence, who left for the Vanderbilt law faculty; Sam Earle Hobbs, an erudite and polished teacher, who left to join his father in law practice; and a couple of young stimulating teachers, whose names I have unfortunately forgotten. Also, the post-war surge of returning veterans continued, providing some colorful and interesting students. But by the summer of 1966 the school had drifted into a quiet period.

Lack of national visibility was a problem. As far as I could tell, the law faculty took little or no significant part in the activities of major national legal organizations such as the AALS, the American Bar Association, or the American Law Institute.[1] A very few did attend the AALS annual meeting from time-to-time. Lack of adequate travel funds was partly responsible. Moreover, compared to law faculties at what were considered “the best” law schools, published scholarship, with very few exceptions, was slim. [2] That, along with the lack of activity at the national level, meant that the faculty was little-known outside of Alabama. Being known on the national scene was institutionally important in attracting superior students, recruiting able teachers, and aiding graduates in securing positions with law firms and government agencies.

On the internal side, what I heard from students and former students about their classroom experiences gave me concern about the nature of some of the teaching. Instruction in a good law school is basically reformist. That is, in addition to imparting to students the existing legal doctrines and rules, the reason for every rule needs to be examined and two questions asked: “Does the rule still make sense?” and “Is there a better way?” Perhaps the most important question in law school is “Why?” My sense was that there was not a great deal of this sort of discussion in the Alabama Law School classrooms. There were exceptions, of course. From random student and alumni comments that came to my attention, there appeared to be two or three professors, possibly four (opinions varied), who were considered effective classroom instructors, some viewed as very good.[3] Most of the teaching faculty appeared relatively undistinguished, either in reputation beyond the school or in the classrooms within it. Yet they were good people, and among them there were admirable individuals who were sincerely dedicated to the school and to what they were doing. At the same time, among most, there appeared to be little ambition to alter the situation, to strive to advance the institution. The status quo seemed satisfactory. I was pleased, however, to find a few who appeared ready to join me in moving to a higher plane.

During my deanship I never publicly voiced criticisms of the existing faculty or of what had gone on before my arrival. I did not want to offend those who were already there. Moreover, I wanted to encourage them to look upon this time as the beginning of a new day for the school, an opportunity to advance our place in legal education. Yet it was essential that I have a clear-eyed awareness of reality in order to know what to do. It made no sense to pretend that all was well.

I have described here the image and status of the school as I found it so that readers can understand what I did or attempted to do over the ensuing four years, an account of which follows.

Every aspect of the school deserved attention—its faculty, curriculum, library, student life, and alumni involvement. All aspects had to be dealt with simultaneously, not in sequence. My objective was to move the school to a higher level of quality in every respect—to achieve a degree of national eminence, at least to create the best law school between Charlottesville, Virginia, and Austin, Texas. Why, I asked myself, shouldn’t the law school be regarded in the field of legal education as the football team was regarded in the world of college football? The challenge was daunting and uphill, but without that as the goal I would not have accepted the deanship. At stake, in my mind, was a future bench and bar and public leadership that would take Alabama into a new and better day.

Underlying all else was the need to secure substantial funding beyond state appropriations, and that was my immediate priority.