Senator Grassley (R, Iowa) was not reassured by the the ABA's response to his first set of questions (see ABA Responds to Senator Grassley). The Senator has now sent the ABA follow-up questions about accreditation. Grassley wants stricter standards on jobs and on student debt, but he also wants fewer academics on "accreditation-related" committees of the Section:
2. Your letter states that “the accreditation-related Committees of the Section…are populated by a very diverse group of professionals.” However the data supplied by the Section states that of the three accreditation-related committees, legal academics and University Presidents and Vice-Presidents make up 48%, 52%, and 64%, respectively, of the total membership of each committee. Has the ABA taken any steps to make these panels more representative of the legal profession as a whole in order to minimize the appearance of a conflict of interest in favor or accrediting more law schools to create more jobs in academia?
a. If so, what steps has the ABA taken?
b. If not, why not?
Letter from Senator Grassley, at 2. The letter is on stationery of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, and is signed by the Senator as Ranking Member of that Committee.
For more information, see Karen Sloan's article, ABA's stance on law school accreditation transparency fails to satisfy senator (NLJ.com).
This statement from Senator Grassley is sort of surprising: "Has the ABA taken any steps to make these panels more representative of the legal profession as a whole in order to minimize the appearance of a conflict of interest in favor or accrediting more law schools to create more jobs in academia?" I might have thought that having too many academics on accreditation committees would lead to fewer schools receiving ABA accreditation. Because I would think they'd be trying to protect their so-called monopoly. I think at this point we can't even reliably predict what would be the position of academics' self-interest.
Posted by: Alfred Brophy | August 13, 2011 at 08:24 PM