Law Schools Move Beyond Moot Court

Law schools are no longer content just to teach creative readings of statutes, not to mention the Constitution itself. They actually want to apply them in real time.

“Tomorrow, August 1, the Board of Governors of the University of North Carolina (UNC) will consider a proposal to bar the university’s centers and institutes from participating in litigation,” Hank Reichman wrote yesterday on the Academe blog maintained by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). “The proposal exempts legal clinics, which makes clear that it is really aimed at the activities of one center only: the Chapel Hill campus’s Center for Civil Rights.”

“ In May AAUP President Rudy Fichtenbaum issued a statement calling on the Board of Governors ‘to cease interfering with the educational mission of the center and allow it to continue its work, which is consistent with the mission of the University of North Carolina and serves the common good.’ [UPDATE: See also “UNC Board should remember UNC mission,” by AAUP President Fichtenbaum and Michael DeCesare, Chair of AAUP’s Committee on College and University Governance, published today in the Raleigh News & Observer.] The ban has been opposed by hundreds of law facultynationwide and by faculty, students, alumni and other North Carolinians.”