June 13, 2005
Dear Graduates and Friends:
In a few weeks, I will conclude my first year as Dean of Yale Law School. Of the many emotions
I feel, the greatest is pride: in the immense privilege of leading the world’s greatest law school, in
the world-class faculty and staff that we have assembled, in our unique combination of excellence
and intimacy, and in the memorable class we have just graduated.
While it is too early to tell where the class of 2005 will end up, we know that about 47 percent
have accepted judicial clerkships. A number have offers to teach or to do research at top law
schools. A number are going on to complete joint degrees. Fifteen current and recent graduates
will begin public interest fellowships in the United States, as well as in such far-flung places as
Burundi, Sierra Leone, India, and Israel. Five recent Yale graduates are currently clerking for the
U.S. Supreme Court and others will start later this summer; and many accepted positions with
private firms.
On the day I was named Dean, I asked our faculty to meet for two days after Graduation 2004 to
discuss the state of the School and our common aspirations for its future. At that retreat, we all
agreed that we could not stay great by standing still. In particular, we face four key challenges:
how to incorporate a truly global perspective into every facet of our intellectual program; how to
maintain and renew our world-class faculty; how to reconnect with the profession; and how to
strengthen our commitment to public service. To achieve these objectives, we must also develop
a financial and facilities plan that can sustain our excellence and intimacy for the generations to
come. After graduation this year, we convened for a second retreat to take stock of the progress
made toward each of these goals. In the pages that follow, let me try to capture some of the
flavor of that 2004-05 academic year.
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Yale Law School renews itself each year with a new crop of extraordinary students. The J.D.
class of 2007 could well be our most remarkable class ever (at least until September, when the
Class of 2008 arrives!). The class included a bronze medalist from the Summer Olympic games
in Athens, two Jeopardy champions, an MTV game show winner, a professional soccer player, a
former professional baseball player and umpire, several published novelists and poets (including
the author of a book of Albanian poetry), an ordained minister and a Jesuit priest, a medical
student, and a researcher who had helped write NASA’s report on the Columbia space shuttle
disaster. Collectively, the class speaks 25 different foreign languages.
Similarly, the applicant pool for our LL.M. program – traditionally dedicated to the training of
law teachers from around the world – has become so rich and varied that the faculty has decided
to increase slightly the size of our entering graduate class. To ensure that we can meet the
challenge of globalization by taking the best graduate students available, we have now earmarked
a number of additional graduate seats for candidates who are not just scholars and teachers, but
rising stars in the government, policymaking, and public interest NGO sectors of their home
countries.
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To give the new students a larger context for their legal studies, we started the year with a new
lecture series entitled “Introductions.” On their first day of school, the entering class heard an
inaugural lecture from Deputy Dean Anne Alstott ’87, the Jacquin D. Bierman Professor of
Taxation, on “An Introduction to Social Welfare Policy.” In the days that followed, they heard
from Sterling Professor John Langbein about the History of Yale Law School and Walter E.
Meyer Professor Robert Ellickson ’66, on New Haven as a Legal Entity. Walter Dellinger ’66,
former acting U.S. Solicitor General, and Pamela Harris ’90-- two professors who are now
partners at O’Melveny & Myers-- gave a thought-provoking introduction to the differences
between theory and practice in the study of law. As the year unfolded, the new students were
introduced to law and economics by Gordon Bradford Tweedy Professor Carol Rose, to schools
of legal theory by Chancellor Kent Professor Robert Gordon, and to approaches to legal thought
by the inimitable Dean/Professor/Judge Guido Calabresi ’58, of the Second Circuit.
Within weeks, small groups had bonded and the first-year class had jelled. As the semester
unfolded, countless occasions for community and camaraderie arose. We brought Peet’s Coffee
to the Dining Hall, wireless internet to all classrooms, and a flat screen TV to the student lounge
(the old “Coke Lounge”), which allowed community-wide viewing of the fall presidential
elections, the Super Bowl, and the Pope’s funeral, among other occasions. YIPPIE!, a student
public interest group, organized student and faculty basketball teams who triumphed over their
Harvard counterparts, and held an uproarious Small Group Olympics (won by the small group of
Alfred M. Rankin Professor Drew Days ’66), featuring hilarious renditions of such parlor games
as Twister, Trivial Pursuit, and Rock-Paper-Scissors.
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World-class students choose Yale Law School because they want to work with world-class
teachers, and vice versa. As Fall 2004 dawned, we brought old and new strength to our faculty.
Henry Hansmann ’73, returned home from a brief hiatus at NYU to succeed John Simon, ‘53 as
the Augustus Lines Professor of Law. John Donohue, formerly of Stanford Law School, was
appointed the inaugural Leighton Homer Surbeck Professor of Law. Rounding out this hat trick
was the arrival of Jon Macey ’82, recently of Cornell, who was appointed the Sam Harris
Professor of Corporate Law, Corporate Finance, and Securities Law. At year’s end, I had the
pleasure of asking the Corporation to name Roberta Romano ’80, to be the inaugural Oscar M.
Ruebhausen Professor of Law (about which more later). Roberta, Alan Schwartz, George Priest,
and Bob Ellickson of our faculty have all served as Presidents of the American Law and
Economics Association. Together with Ian Ayres, Al Klevorick, Jerry Mashaw, Susan RoseAckerman, Henry Smith, and Rick Brooks, these new and old arrivals secure our School’s
position as the leading intellectual center for the study of law, economics and organization.
Our globalization faculty also prospered. Amy Chua was appointed the inaugural John M. Duff,
Jr. Professor of Law. Further strengthening our international faculty was the arrival of a leading
Europeanist, Alec Stone Sweet of Nuffield College, Oxford, who became the inaugural Leitner
Professor of International Law, Politics, and International Studies. Jim Silk ’89, a superb
clinician and Executive Director of the Schell Center for International Human Rights, was
appointed Associate Clinical Professor to teach international law and human rights. Finally, to
strengthen our commitment to public service, we appointed Associate Professor Ronald Sullivan,
formerly Director of the Washington, D.C. Public Defender Service, as founding Director of the
new Samuel and Anna Jacobs Criminal Defense Clinic; in just his first year, “Sully” won the
YLS Award for outstanding teaching.
New deanships also mark occasions for administrative transition. Associate Dean Ian Solomon
’02, left us this spring to become Legislative Counsel for Senator Barack Obama of Illinois.
After fourteen years of dedicated service working with our students, Natalia Martin ’85, returns
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this fall to Simpson Thacher & Bartlett (where she began her legal career) to continue her work
with young lawyers. Mark Templeton ’99, formerly of McKinsey, Goldman Sachs, and the State
Department’s Human Rights Bureau, has hit the ground running as our new Associate Dean for
Finance and Administration. Meanwhile, Professor Kenji Yoshino ’96, who gave an electrifying
speech at this year’s graduation, has energized the community in the newly created role of Deputy
Dean for Intellectual Life.
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The intellectual life that Kenji oversees remains a feast of speakers, student-organized activities,
and special events. Here is a snapshot of the offerings, a number of which can be viewed on our
website, www.law.yale.edu:
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One event that stands out was a rousing lecture by Paul Rusesabagina, the real-life star of
Hotel Rwanda. Paul’s talk was set in context by a showing of the award-winning film at
which five of our students spoke: one about a human rights group he had founded called
“Orphans of Rwanda;” a second about supporting the first Kigali Public Library, two
others about their summer work for the Rwandan War Crimes Tribunal, and a fifth about
how to use the interest stirred by the movie to raise public awareness about the genocide
in Darfur.
We hosted symposia on the great John Hart Ely ’63, a former faculty member whose
writings on democracy, judicial review, and war powers defined the field (forthcoming in
the Yale Law Journal), and another honoring our beloved colleague Jay Katz, a leading
thinker on issues of patient autonomy and informed consent.
Other important conferences focused on the global flow of information, animal law,
same-sex marriage and U.S. policy in Colombia. The last major event of the year was a
probing three-day reflection on “The Constitution in 2020,” a national gathering of
progressive academics and activists co-sponsored with the American Constitution Society
and the Center for American Progress. Janet Reno, former U.S. Attorney General, gave
the keynote address, and many of the provocative comments made at the conference can
be viewed at http://constitutionin2020.blogspot.com.
Other distinguished speakers who graced our halls included: Justice Rosalie Abella of the
Supreme Court of Canada; Ralph Cavanagh ’77, who directs the Energy Program of the
Natural Resources Defense Council; Professor Lauren Edelman, Director of the Center
for the Study of Law and Society at Berkeley; Elaine Jones, President and DirectorCounsel Emeritus of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund; Congressman
John R. Lewis; Martin Marty, a leading authority on American religious history;
renowned philosopher Thomas Nagel, who gave the Storrs Lectures; and John Podesta,
President and CEO of the Center for American Progress and former Chief of Staff to
President Clinton.
My personal favorites were a November rally that saw Red Sox team President and CEO
Larry Lucchino ’71, bring the World Championship trophy back to our courtyard
(although one Yankee-loving alum dashed me an e-mail protesting the visit as
“potentially unconstitutional desecration of hallowed ground!”). A few months later, my
international human rights class had a special treat when two students tasked with
presenting policy papers to the “Secretary of State” had the chance to make their
recommendations to former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who stopped by
to teach the class while passing through New Haven. After the class, Secretary Albright
joined the Yale Law Women’s “power reception,” celebrating our graduate Chief Justice
Margaret Marshall ’76, of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, as a Distinguished
YLW Alumna.
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Yale Law School’s influence pervades American legal education. Although our alumni
represent less than one percent of law school graduates nationwide, they comprise roughly
ten percent of the nation’s law professors. One recent study showed that nearly one-third of
the tenure-track law professors recently hired at the nation’s leading law schools are our
graduates, and we are proud that our graduates have assumed the deanships at such leading
law schools as Chicago, Columbia, Fordham, Georgetown, George Washington, Michigan,
Northwestern, NYU, Penn, UCLA, and Vanderbilt.
But in the century ahead, the Law School must reach beyond its traditional strength as a
leader in the interdisciplinary study of law. To strengthen the Law School's ties to the
profession, I hope to build and extend our interdisciplinary programs not just between law
and its related academic disciplines, but also between law and its related professions: for
example, law and business, law and public health, law and public policy, law and
environmental studies, and law and journalism.
To boost our law-and-business efforts, I have asked our new Ruebhausen Professor, Roberta
Romano ’80, to head and expand the Law School’s Center for the Study of Corporate Law,
which has become a leading source of ideas on corporate and business law, the regulation of
financial markets and intermediaries, and the legal framework of finance. This past April, the
Center hosted the first Weil, Gotshal & Manges Roundtable here at the Law School, featuring
discussions on stock delisting and finance, and the electronic transformation of the stock
exchanges.
To encourage our students to think more creatively about their careers after law school, I
inaugurated a new series, called the Dean’s Program on the Profession. These talks featured
distinguished alumni who have used their legal education to pursue imaginative practice
options. This year’s guests included Jon Blake ’64, Candace Beinecke, and Bill Perlstein ’74,
the present or former managing partners of Covington & Burling, Hughes Hubbard & Reed,
and Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr, discussing the challenges of managing the new
global law firm. Introducing the community to the challenges of venture capital was Kevin
Czinger ’87; on health care law, David Jones ’60, co-founder and longtime chairman of
Humana, Inc.; and on entertainment and sports law, Fay Vincent ’63, former Commissioner
of Major League Baseball, president and CEO of Columbia Pictures, and executive vicepresident of the Coca-Cola Company.
To dig more deeply into law and globalization, last fall’s Alumni Weekend focused on the
question: “How Should a Yale Law School Education Address Global Issues?” We have
spent much of this year reflecting on that conversation. Our China Law Center has continued
to flourish under the energetic direction of Potter Stewart Professor Paul Gewirtz ’70, see
http://chinalaw.law.yale.edu/. As our own Supreme Court addresses nearly 20 transnational
cases on its plenary docket, we have continued to convene our Global Constitutionalism
seminar for supreme court justices from around the world. The Middle East Legal Studies
Seminar, which will convene in Jordan next January, has now emerged as perhaps the leading
academic forum for dialogue on the legal challenges facing the Middle East, including an
invigorating session this past year on nation-building in Iraq and Palestine. This week, the
tenth annual Seminar on Latin American Legal Theory (SELA) will be held in Rio de
Janeiro, bringing together over 100 leading scholars to ask how law can help to eradicate
poverty in the Western Hemisphere.
Meanwhile, at this year’s faculty retreat, we explored the curricular dimensions of
globalization, including possible changes in the first-term curriculum, mini-courses taught by
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foreign visitors, a regular second-term course on Introduction to Transnational Law, and
serious collective thinking (led by Professor Amy Chua) on how to develop institutional ties
with foreign law schools and programs.
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More than any other law school in the country, ours embraces its graduates as an essential
part of its organic life. A singular joy of my first year as Dean has been the chance to join in
your activities around the country and to see so many of you face to face. No one better
exemplifies the extraordinary commitment and generosity of our graduates than the late
Oscar M. Ruebhausen ’37, who passed away in December. Oscar was a giant of the New
York Bar, President of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, and for many
years, managing partner at the New York law firm of Debevoise & Plimpton. He chaired the
Yale Law School Fund, and received the Law School’s Medal of Merit in 1978. Oscar and
his late wife Zelia left a gift of extraordinary generosity to the Law School which will go to
support a professorship, visiting scholars, student activities and other innovative programs at
the Law School. In leaving their gift, the Ruebhausens wrote: “It is … our objective that the
Yale Law School continue to occupy a position of responsible leadership in our society – a
leadership that is innovative and responsive to changing societal needs and opportunities,
and respected as a force for, and as a voice of, reason, fairness, and decency. . . .” I can
think of no better description or definition of our School’s goals.
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Finally, I cannot close without mentioning a matter of principle about which you will surely
hear more in the months ahead: the Solomon Amendment. This federal statute originally
stated that any federally funded school refusing to allow military recruiters access to its
students on campus is vulnerable to losing its government funding. This fall, in FAIR v.
Rumsfeld, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear a case brought by a consortium of law schools
and law faculties to challenge this law.
Our school has a long-standing nondiscrimination policy, adopted in 1978, which states:
Yale Law School is committed to a policy against discrimination based upon age, color,
handicap or disability, ethnic or national origin, race, religion, religious creed, gender
(including discrimination taking the form of sexual harassment), marital, parental or veteran
status, sexual orientation, or the prejudice of clients. All employers using the school's
placement services are required to abide by this policy.
For nearly thirty years, our School has applied this nondiscrimination policy to give access,
but not active assistance, to employers who insist upon discriminating among our students in
their hiring practices based on sexual orientation. In 2002, however, the federal government
began to implement a stricter interpretation of the Amendment, and informed Yale Law
School that the School was no longer in compliance with the terms of the Amendment,
threatening to cut off more than $300 million in Yale’s federal funding.
Contrary to some news accounts, employers who are unwilling or unable to abide by our
nondiscrimination policy are not barred from campus or from recruiting our students. Such
employers are entirely free to arrange independently to meet with interested students at the
Law School or elsewhere. But such an employer may not avail itself of the interviewcoordination services provided by our career development office (CDO), for the simple
reason that we are not a law school that aids and abets discrimination.
Last year, separate groups of Yale Law School faculty and students filed suits, independent of
the Law School, in the federal district court in Bridgeport, challenging the legality of the
Defense Department’s interpretation of the Solomon Amendment. (Information on the status
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of these and other pending court cases, as well as public statements by the School, can be
found on our website under Current Issues: Military Recruitment at Yale Law School.)
I am well aware that these lawsuits will stimulate intense debate outside our community, as
they have already generated much discussion within it. Yale Law School remains an equal
opportunity employer and fully supports any employer who offers equal opportunity. We do
not, nor will we ever, exclude any speaker from speaking or any point of view from being
fully aired within the School. At the same time, we also believe that the U.S. Constitution
bars the government from requiring us, as a condition of federal funding, to promote a
message of employment discrimination.
If standing up for this principle costs us support, so be it. As I made clear when I took office,
Yale Law School must never be just another professional school. We are an intellectual
community of high moral purpose. We have never let outside employers seek our school’s
assistance so they can hire some of our students, but not others, based on their race, gender,
religion, or sexual orientation. Our students are all our students, and for that reason, we are
duty-bound, as lawyers, scholars, and teachers, not to assist deliberate discrimination against
them.
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While the Yale Law School family, like all families, must have its moments of intense
debate, we also have our moments of reunion. One of these moments will take place at next
fall’s Alumni Weekend 2005 (November 4-5) which will focus on “Entrepreneurship and the
Law.” By hearing from our alumni who have created new enterprises for the private practice
of law, for the practice of public interest law, for innovative business experiments, and for
pathbreaking social entrepreneurship, we hope to examine how and why Yale Law graduates
take risks and the costs and benefits that those decisions entail. I hope as many of you as
possible will join us.
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What has struck me most during this first year is how deeply the Law School is loved by its
graduates, students, faculty, and staff members. Alumni like Oscar Ruebhausen understood
their debt to the generations of graduates who went before them, and honored that debt by
repaying it to the graduates of the future. And so it has been for nearly 200 years.
Without such love, we would not be here. As a small school, we literally could not survive
without the generosity of our graduates. Of all the law schools in America, we are among
those that rely least on tuition, and that depend most on alumni generosity, to make ends meet
and help the school change and grow. The last dollars received at the end of each fiscal year
(June 30) provide the last bit of discretionary funds to support student scholarships, to fund
student trips, to support the events described above, and to seed new faculty-student
initiatives.
Yale Law School can neither survive nor prosper without the extraordinary generosity of
those, like you, who have spent their lives as part of our community of our commitment.
After just one year as the spokesman for this community, I remain excited and inspired by all
of you, and the important challenges we face together. Thank you so much for your
friendship and generosity during my first year. You can only imagine how much it means to
me.
With warmest regards,