Ergo...
IN a few months, some 300 Dartmouth seniors will join 130,000 other college seniors around the country to compete for 38,000 places in America's law schools. Not all of them hope to practice law (the country needs only about 20,000 new attorneys each year), but they recognize that a working knowledge of legal principles and methods has become increasingly valuable in a wide range of careers - politics, public administration, planning, journalism, business, engineering - and increasingly necessary to the solution of a wide range of public problems - crime, poverty, pollution, consumer fraud, substandard housing, poor education, inadequate transportation, and abuses of political power. A knowledge of law is important not only because it can be instrumental in achieving certain goals; it can also reveal us to ourselves. The law embodies our noblest hopes and basest fears. It reminds us of the goals we as a nation once sought, and it forces us to face implications and contradictions in the goals we now week.
A law school at Dartmouth would help fill a national gap in the availability of high-quality legal education, and offer the kind of professional training which so many Dartmouth undergraduates wish to obtain.
A law school would also fill a gap in professional education at Dartmouth. Dartmouth now has the fourth oldest medical school in America, one of the first professional schools of civil engineering, and the oldest graduate school of business administration. All of them combine small size with the highest quality of professional education. A law school would be a valuable and natural addition. Students at Tuck School could round out their business training with courses in corporate law, tax, labor law, and securities and trade regulation. Students at Thayer could supplement their engineering studies with courses in patent law, land-use planning and environmental protection, and laws relating to housing, transportation, and computer technology. Medical students could benefit from courses in forensic medicine, insurance law, and legal implications of experimentation on human beings, adoption, abortion, and care of the terminally ill. Law students similarly would benefit from what would be an opportunity to gain a uniquely intimate perspective on the interactions among law, business, technology, and medicine.
A small law school would enrich undergraduate education at Dartmouth. As undergraduates at Yale and Harvard well know, the presence of legal scholars and law students on campus often enlivens and sharpens debate on public issues. It can also endow a liberal arts curriculum with new perspectives - legal analysis is intimately tied to linguistic philosophy and logic on the one side and to politics and welfare economics on the other. At its best, the law also draws force from the richness of the liberal arts.
A law school at Dartmouth is appropriate, too, because of Dartmouth's particular historical relationship to the law, beginning with the seminal Supreme Court decision that bears the College's name. Dartmouth's lawyer alumni have distinguished themselves by their contributions to the law and their service to the College. Many of their names are etched in Dartmouth's memory: Tappan Wentworth, Justice Levi Woodbury, Daniel Webster, Rufus Choate, Chief Justice Salmon Chase, Chief Justice Charles Doe of the New Hampshire Superior Court Frank S. Streeter and, more recently, John Sloan Dickey.
Upwards of 5,000 living alumni are members of the legal profession - a formidable group representing almost every type of law practice and law-related occupation. Dartmouth's lawyer alumni are a valuable resource. They could share with law students their experiences in the law through guest lectures and visiting professorships; they could supply innovative ideas for designing the law school and building the law curriculum; they could, perhaps, provide jobs to Dartmouth law graduates.
The next few years are likely to be a particularly propitious time in which to establish a law school, not only because the demand for legal education is increasing, but also because (perhaps due to the increasing demand) legal education itself is undergoing profound changes. The so-called Socratic method of legal education, with an emphasis upon appellate case law (developed at Harvard Law School a century ago) is giving way to new methods - problem-centered seminars in which students develop solutions to legal problems they are likely to encounter in practice, legal "clinics" where students serve real clients and litigate on their behalf (under close supervision), and cross-disciplinary studies in law and related disciplines. A Dartmouth law school could experiment and innovate in these and other methods; it could develop a mix of techniques appropriate to its unique size, location, and resources.
A law school need not be large in order to offer legal education of exceptional quality. A faculty of 15 law professors can teach a full range of basic courses and have time left to conduct tutorials and seminars and supervise independent study. A relatively small number of students - say, 250 in all - would have greater opportunity for interaction among themselves and with faculty than if the school were larger.
But can Dartmouth afford a high-quality law school? The answer must be a qualified yes. Legal education is economical, in part because the ratio of students to faculty can be large without impairing educational quality (the ratio at Harvard Law School is 25:1), and in part because the fixed costs are low (the main operating expenses are faculty salaries and a law library). A small law school of 15 faculty and 225 students (a highly favorable student to faculty ratio of 15:1), with faculty salaries sufficiently high to attract the best legal talent (average $23,000), and expenditures sufficient to maintain an excellent law library ($225,000 a year) would cost about $1.1 million annually - considerably less than the annual cost of Dartmouth's athletic program. More than half of this sum would be recouped in tuition and fees. Still, that leaves an annual deficit of approximately $500,000, requiring an endowment of $7 million or some combination of gift and endowment income.
To be sure, this seems an unpropitious time to propose something that will cost more money, even if the cost is relatively low. Everything already costs more money. Who has the energy to worry about improving the quality and range of Dartmouth education by establishing a law school when we have all we can do to maintain financially the present.quality and range of Dartmouth education? Yet, ironically, it is just such dour times as these that force an institution to be creative, make difficult choices about its future, and reappraise its priorities. In his recent five-year report to the Trustees of the College, in a section entitled "The Future," President Kemeny suggests that the establishment of a law school may some day be a desirable project for the Trustees to undertake. If there is to be a Dartmouth law school, perhaps this critical point in the life of the College and the life of the law is the best time to begin planning for it.
Robert Reich is Assistant Solicitor General of the United States.
