On the behest of a few law school deans, the American Bar Association (ABA) is toying with the idea of dropping tenure systems as one requirement for law school accreditation.

The ABA has set up a task force to look into a set of recommendations and is expected to submit its report on June 9, along with a separate report by the minority.  However, speculations are rife on the organization’s probable recommendations, which many feel will sway according to law deans’ urgings.

Earlier in the week, the ABA Accreditation Policy Task Force conducted a preliminary vote on the recommendations.  The majority recommended that the requirements for accreditation should not include employment terms and conditions.  

This was stated by Gary Palm, a retired clinical law professor at the University of Chicago and former member of the ABA’s accrediting body.  Though the vote is not final, it shows the cracks on the task force’s opinion.

Currently, the ABA stipulates that accredited schools have tenure systems, which affect the academic freedom of regular faculty, full-time clinical faculty members, library directors, and deans.

The American Law Deans Association (ALDA), for some time now, has been urging the ABA to stop regulating the employment contracts of accredited law schools.  ALDA reasons that the slackening standards will give schools the freedom to formulate their own employment policies.

David Van Zandt, the dean of Northwestern University School of Law and president of the law deans group, refuted charges that ALDA’s move is a tactic to destabilize the tenure system.  He said that ALDA asked the “task force to recommend that the council remove from the standards all references to terms and conditions of employment and urges that the council do so as soon as possible.”  

However, despite Van Zandt’s claims that it was a “unanimous statement of ALDA’s board of directors,” others say it wasn’t.  Most defenders of the tenure system also feel that ALDA’s move resulted from ABA’s scrutiny of its chief advocate over his institution's employment conditions.  In the meantime, clinical faculty and law librarians have already submitted documents in opposition to ALDA’s stand on the issue. 

ABA, at the same time, is also defending its position as the nation’s law school accrediting agency, as recognized by the Education Department.  This reputation is also running into troubled waters as many smaller institutions have complained of “insufficient accommodation in the ABA’s regulatory obligations,” says a report in Inside Higher Ed.