The Association of American Law Schools (AALS) was formed in 1900 to improve legal education in the United States. Twenty-seven of the 35 law schools that sent representatives to the founding meeting in Saratoga Springs, New York, agreed to become charter members. With the election of five more schools at the first Annual Meeting in 1901, 32 of the 108 law schools in the United States became charter members of AALS. AALS membership grew apace with the country’s population and the need for more lawyers to represent its citizens, businesses, governments, and the public interest. The Association was nearly 100 schools strong by 1940 and today has 174 members and 20 fee-paid law schools participating.
From the beginning, law professors and deans did not want the government telling them what or how to teach. In contrast, they did think that law schools could assist one another in becoming the very best law schools in the world.
Having outstanding law schools was considered a key goal because lawyers from the beginning have played a more dominate role in the United States than in most other countries. Nearly half of the members of the two Continental Congresses were trained in law. Their presence is lower today, but lawyers still make up roughly 30 percent of the House and nearly half of the Senate. Beginning with John Adams, 27 of the 47 presidents (60 percent) also have been trained in law.
The founding of AALS took place at roughly the same time that being a full-time law professor first emerged as a career choice. The first AALS President was James Bradley Thayer, a constitutional law professor at Harvard Law School, who explained the link in an address to the ABA in 1895:
“It is a simple truth that you cannot have thorough and first-rate training in law, any more than in physical sciences, unless you have a body of learned teachers, and you cannot have a learned faculty of law unless, like other faculties, they give their lives in their work. The main secret of teaching law, as of all teaching, is what Socrates declared to be the secret of eloquence, understanding your subject; and that requires . . . an enormous and absorbing amount of labor.”
Harlan Fiske Stone, then Dean of Columbia Law School, a future Attorney General of the United States and later, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, served as President of AALS during World War I. Erwin Griswold, future Solicitor General of the United States and then Dean of Harvard Law School, held the post in 1958. Soia Mentschikoff, Dean of the University of Miami School of Law and an author of the Uniform Commercial Code, became the first woman to serve as President in 1974.
From the beginning, an Executive Committee was the principal driver of AALS policy and decision-making. The President appointed a nominating committee, which nominated a new President, one other officer and three members for the Executive Committee. Those nominated were voted on by the member schools attending the Annual Meeting.
That same governance structure has remained in place for 125 years, although the number of officers was increased to include first a president-elect and later, an immediate past president. The non-officer members’ terms were gradually increased to three years, with two appointed each year. In 1963 the position of Executive Director was created. The Director is an ex officio member of the Executive Committee.
For its first 62 years, the Association relied entirely on the elected officers and other volunteer faculty to carry out its work, including making arrangements for the Annual Meeting and publication of the AALS Directory of Law Teachers. In 1963 the Association established a national office in Washington, DC and hired Professor Michael H. Cardozo of Cornell Law School as its first Executive Director. The House of Representatives was also established to ensure member schools had a voice in the major affairs of the AALS.
When Cardozo was appointed, little was said about his role. In 2008, however, in recognition of how governance in the Association had evolved, the House of Representatives made the Executive Director the Chief Executive Officer of the Association in place of the President who continues to preside over the Executive Committee and House of Representatives.
Diversity came slowly to AALS. In 1950, the membership resolved that the AALS should abolish “segregation or discrimination in legal education on racial grounds” and take appropriate enforcement action. In 1951, the membership adopted a resolution that embraced “equality of opportunity in legal education without discrimination or segregation on the ground of race or color.”
In subsequent years, equality of opportunity was extended to apply to faculty and staff as well as to students, and to cover more characteristics than race. Today, AALS requires all member schools “to provide equality of opportunity in legal education for all persons, including faculty and employees, . . . applicants for admission, enrolled students, and graduates, without discrimination or segregation recognized by applicable state and federal law.”
In 1966, the first person of color was elected to the Executive Committee, Clarence Clyde Ferguson, Jr. He had been barred from higher education in his home state of North Carolina because of his race, graduated cum laude from Ohio State University in 1948 and Harvard Law School in 1951. He had served in the United States Army from 1943 to 1946 where he took part in the Normandy invasion. When elected to the Executive Committee, Ferguson was Dean of Howard Law School.
Emma Coleman Jordan was elected to the Executive Committee in 1989 and in 1992 became the first Black President of AALS. The first woman elected to the Executive Committee was Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who later served as a Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. She was also the first woman on the faculty at Columbia Law School when she joined the Executive Committee of AALS in 1972. Other firsts followed including Leo Romero (University of New Mexico School of Law) the first Hispanic member of the Executive Committee in 1981; Gerald Torres (The University of Texas School of Law), the first Hispanic President in 2004; Rennard Strickland (University of Oregon School of Law), a legal historian of Osage and Cherokee heritage who served as the first Native American President in 1994; and Wallace D. Loh (University of Washington School of Law), the first Asian-American to serve on the Executive Committee in 1972, and as President of AALS in 1976.
The 1970s saw major growth in the number of clinical faculty at the nation’s law schools. Soon there was similar growth in the number of legal research and writing faculty. By 2000, Elliott Milstein (American University, Washington College of Law) was the first clinical faculty member elected President of AALS, and in 2020, Darby Dickerson (Southwestern Law School) became the first faculty member from the legal research and writing field to be elected President of AALS.
The second major structural change spurred by Executive Director Cardozo was the establishment of Sections in 1973. Before then, there were Round Tables organized by subject areas of the law, but all members of each Round Table had to be appointed by the AALS President. This top-down arrangement had become extremely unwieldy by the 1970s. AALS President Richard Maxwell of UCLA explained in 1973 that Sections were a more democratic way to organize academics.
A look at the history of Sections also provides a revealing overview of the evolving curriculum of most law schools because faculty from at least 25 member schools must petition to establish a new section.
The 21 Century brought significant changes made possible by new technology. In 2020, COVID-19 required faculty at most law schools to pivot suddenly to online teaching. The next year, AALS held its first virtual Annual Meeting.
New technology also significantly boosted the role of Sections because as each Section now can host an online discussion list as well as virtual meetings on topics of particular interest to its members.
Programming for deans increased beginning with the Deans Forum and Deans Steering Committee in 2014. In 2020, Kellye Testy, then President of the Law School Admissions Council and Executive Director Judy Areen began hosting regular Deans Dialogues.
What has not changed over time is the core commitment of members of the AALS to continue to increase excellence in legal education.