UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
Washington, DC 20585
In the Matter of:
The Petition for Renewal of Recognition
by the American Bar Association, Council
of the Section of Legal Education and
Admissions to the Bar
National Advisory Committee on
Institutional Quality and Integrity
meeting December 4-6, 2006
Federal Reg Notice Vol 71 No. 142
July 26, 2006 – Page 42368, first column
Item 2, American Bar Association
JEFOUND AND SCOTT RESPONSE IN OPPOSITION TO THE PETITION FOR RENEWAL OF THE ABA COUNCIL OF THE SECTION OF LEGAL EDUCATION AND ADMISSIONS TO CONTINUE TO ACCREDIT LAW SCHOOLS
Judicial Equality Foundation, Incorporated, a Florida non-profit corporation, (‘jefound”) and William Sumner Scott, a citizen of the United States, (“Scott”), submit their Opposition to the Petition of the Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar of the American Bar Association, (the “Council”), for renewal of the Council’s exclusive right to accredit American Law Schools throughout the United States previously granted by the United States, Department of Education, pursuant to the Higher Education Act of 1985, 79 Stat. 1212, as amended, 20 U.S. C. A. § 1070, (the “HEA”) and the Department’s Regulations published at 34 CFR § 602, as follows:
JURISDICTION AND STANDING
1) Article III, Section 2, of the United States Constitution reserves jurisdiction to the Congress to make exceptions to the authority of the Judicial Branch of government.
2) The Constitution, Articles I and II, and protection of the public welfare require Congress to adopt, and the HEA requires the Executive Branch to administer, laws and regulations to govern the education of law students, including the accreditation of public and private law schools. These rights include the Department’s authority to renew or terminate the Council’s authority to accredit law schools. Goldfarb v Virginia State Bar, 421 U.S. 773 (1975); United States v Pink, 315 U.S. 203 (1942).
3) Jefound and Scott have standing to submit this Opposition as members of the public.
COUNT I
ABA FAILURE TO COMPLY WITH §602.16(a)(1)(i)
4) The ABA, through its Council, has failed to demonstrate that it is a reliable authority regarding the quality of education with respect to the institution’s mission of provision of a system of education in the United States in the following respects:
a) Limits competition among law schools to develop curricula to meet the needs of the public by imposition of a Law School Admission Test (the “LSAT”) that determines the ability of the applicant to take a written exam but tests no other skills.
b) Allows the LSAT results to be published with the inference that schools that admit students with low scores are inferior to those that require high scores. This is counterproductive to the focus on the quality of law school curriculum and graduates.
c) Imposes standards such as full time faculty, building ownership and law libraries upon law schools that have no relevance to the quality of instruction or ability of law graduates to serve the public and that result in unnecessary costs for law schools and their students.
d) The LSAT governs admission, the Council determines what is taught, and the ABA proscribes the questions to be asked by the licensing authority in the various states so that it is in control of who becomes educated, how they become educated, and whether they were sufficiently educated. All are in conflict with the best interests of the public.
5) The ABA has failed to demonstrate that it is a reliable authority to engage in any activity related to the admission of students to law school, their education, or their admission to the bar by its failure to comply with the laws applicable to its operation:
a) The United States of America filed a Complaint against the ABA to allege that its practices, rules, and interpretations violated Section 1 of the Sherman Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1, that resulted in a final judgment. Unites States v American Bar Association, 934 F. Supp. 435.
b) Although the ABA, through its President, denied it did anything wrong, the entry of the final judgment ipso facto demonstrates failure to comply with the Sherman Act.
c) The Final Judgment, Competitive Impact Statement, Response to Public Comments and Modification are posted on the Department of Justice web site at: http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/americ1.htm and are incorporated herein.
d) The Modified Final Judgment violated the ABA Constitution that requires decisions of the ABA to be made by its Board, and not the Council, and also violated the laws of the State of Illinois that prohibit the delegation by non-profit corporations of decisions to any committee that is not composed of members of the board.
e) The ABA has failed to obey the laws that govern its operations.
COUNT II
ABA FAILURE TO COMPLY WITH §602.16(a)(1)(vii)
6) The ABA imposes arbitrary and capricious criteria upon all law schools for the admission of students to law school, such as the successful completion of the LSAT and rank in undergraduate class in all subjects taken.
a) Law schools must determine who they wish to attract to educate rather than the Council if creativity, course specific skills, integrity, and good judgment are to be placed on equal footing with written exam proficiency of prospective students.
b) The accreditation process must be focused on the ability of the student to learn as judged by the law schools, not the Council.
COUNT III
ABA FAILURE TO COMPLY WITH §602.16(a)(1)(viii)
7) The Council has no criteria based upon the needs of the public. Every law school is required to have the same course program and educate every student in all areas of the law so as to prepare them to take a standard exam prepared by the ABA on all subjects, rather than demonstrate the student’s ability to serve the public.
a) The needs of the public have moved beyond the arcane course structure and attempt to instruct all students in all subjects at the law school level.
b) The attempt to teach all subjects to all students creates the mistaken belief by law graduates that once they pass the license test; they are qualified to practice law in any discipline they wish.
c) This mistake of competency is compounded by the states’ license and practice procedures that permit a lawyer to immediately commence practice without internship or other demonstration of skill in any specific discipline offered to the public.
d) Pre-law requirements for every law course would require the employment of law instructors who have either a deep specific knowledge of the subject or practiced in the area of the law taught. The quality of instruction and graduates would improve.
e) Whether the instruction is provided by a full or part time instructor is irrelevant. Law schools must be free to employ the best instructors available without regard to how many hours they teach.
f) The number of hours of outside employment by students is irrelevant. Students must be permitted to take the outside employment necessary to finance their education.
g) Many student employment opportunities provide training that benefits the study of law, such as bank trust officers, law enforcement officers, social workers, teachers, paralegals, court reporters and other similar employment. In addition, work outside the classroom exposes students to the public they will serve.
h) Course study, number of classroom hours and years of study to get a degree should be developed by the law schools and the state license boards without control from the Council, a trade union for lawyers.
8) The Council has failed to establish specific pre-law course requirements.
a) Law students are admitted to: (i) constitutional law classes without undergraduate history; (ii) corporations without finance or accounting; (ii) domestic relations without psychology. The law professor in all law school classes must begin with the most rudimentary explanations and often fails to achieve the depth in course materials one would expect of a professional education.
b) Law students must be required to have declared their intention to go to law school in undergrad and to have taken courses that are specific to the area of the law they elect to study. This will identify students who can plan ahead and have the desire to be lawyers.
c) Once the undergraduate declares his or her intention to go to law school, the undergraduate school will have an incentive to focus on the quality of education provided and on the performance of the declared pre-law student to be certain the undergraduate school’s reputation is preserved with the law school’s admissions department.
9) The Council has not required courses in religious history or the content of holy books.
a) The World has continuously been under siege by organized religion both before and after the United States was founded.
b) The Torah, Bible and Qur’an teach with impunity the same intolerant verses such as those found in Deuteronomy 13:6-11.[1]
c) The Council has adopted no course parameters to teach law students how to overcome religious abuse by use of the judicial system.[2]
10) The Council fails to require courses to prevent unjust application of the law:
a) If non-violent means are to be found to eliminate social abuses, the legal system must begin to look for justice rather than refuse to protect the rights of citizens as the legal system did in the Padilla case.[3]
b) The Council does nothing to establish law school curricula to stimulate the search for justice by law graduates. Students must be encouraged to explore the law and its application in certain causes, particularly those that are not popular.
c) The plea bargain criminal system is based upon fear by the accused of a greater sentence if he or she proceeds to trial rather than upon their guilt or innocence.
d) In addition, those with past convictions are forced to consider the increase in their penalty because of their past convictions.
e) To avoid the risk of an arbitrarily increased sentence, the accused, including the innocent, must plead guilty to the charges in exchange for the promise of a lower sentence than if convicted of the allegations. Often the decision is influenced by a lack of confidence in the public defender or the lawyer the accused can afford.
f) The Council has done nothing to train students of the unfairness of the criminal plea bargain system.
g) DNA evidence has proven many innocent people have been convicted of capital offenses. There have been 23 capital cases overturned in Florida. Were it not for the resistance by some prosecutors to voluntarily admit DNA evidence, there would have been more cases overturned.
h) Law students must be trained to immediately admit and correct mistakes.
ARGUMENT
The education standards set by the Council are exemplified by the comments of Ann Coulter, a lawyer, on the qualifications of Harriet Miers for Supreme Court Justice:
“Today, women make up about 45 percent of the students at the nation’s top law schools (and more than 50 percent at all law schools) . . . The average LSAT score at SMU Law School is 155 (sic where Miers went to school). The average LSAT at Harvard is 170.”[4]
The fact that Ms. Miers graduated from law school, practiced law for more than 20 years, and served as legal counsel to the President of the United States had no value. She was doomed at the outset because her school, not her, had a low LSAT score.
Rank in law school graduating class is also used to measure performance. Ms. Coulter says in the same article that if one wants to be on the Supreme Court with no prior judicial experience as did Justice Byron White (first at Yale) or Justice William Rehnquist (first at Stanford), then one must be first in class at a top law school. The Council has made class rank and top law schools relevant without any evaluation criteria based upon the quality of law graduates and their ability to serve the public.
The failure of the Council to stress the importance of education is summed up by the Supreme Court decision of Wisconsin v Yoder, 406 U. S. 205 (1972), which condones Amish parents denial of an education to their children beyond the eighth grade on freedom of religion grounds. Law school courses that stress the value of education would produce members of the legal profession who would never take that position.
The Council has failed to teach the value of legal terms to law students. The most serious deficiencies are the failure to give substance to the words “illegal”, “journalism”, “whistleblower”, and “democracy”. Anarchy is demonstrated by the march of illegal aliens in the streets. Undergraduate and graduate courses titled journalism include those that censor students’ rights to free expression.[5] The report of misfeasance by whistleblowers is met with retribution rather than rewards.[6] Our government is permitted to engage in war to foster democracy without inclusion of the rights that free people enjoy, including separation of church from state.[7]
The legal profession allowed the Constitution of the United States to enforce slavery for over 76 years[8], failed to permit women to vote for over 121 years, and continues to permit organized religion to practice and teach religious verses that lead to murder, mayhem, and abuse.
The American people need law students who are trained to search for and immediately provide justice. Achievement of that result requires a cultural shift to elevate the judicial function to be an equal branch of government free from political correctness.
The Council is composed of people who control the education of law students for the benefit of ABA members rather than stimulate competition among educators to train lawyers to serve the public.
WHEREFORE, the Advisory Committee is requested to recommend to the Secretary that the Renewal of the Council’s authority to accredit law schools be DENIED. And, that the denial be published in the Federal Register with a request for comments from the public of how and by whom law schools should be accredited, the terms upon which law students are admitted to law school, and the design of law school curricula to best serve the interests of the public. Particularly, we suggest that the Secretary ask for recommendations for:
A. Pre-law course requirements to be established for every law school course; and
B. Pre-law and law students be trained in depth to value integrity and service to the public; and
C. The criteria to be used to expand the law school curricula to include training on how to serve as a judge, how to deal with religious issues, how to search to provide justice, and other modernization of law school curricula; and
D. All exams for admission to practice law be administered by the executive branch of government or an independent body it selects; and
E. The amount of freedom to be granted to law schools to employ faculty, acquire the use of facilities, and develop law school curricula to meet specific public needs.
We request the opportunity to present testimony in support of this Opposition.
/s/ William S. Scott
William Sumner Scott, J.D.
JUDICIAL EQUALITY FOUNDATION, INC.
By : /s/ William S. Scott
William Sumner Scott, J. D.
Executive Director
Judicial Equality Foundation, Inc.
wss@jefound.org
[1] Deuteronomy 13:6-11: “If your very own brother, or your son, or daughter, or the wife you love, or your closest friend secretly entices you, saying, ‘Let us go and worship other gods’ (gods that neither you nor your fathers have known, gods of the people around , whether near or far, from the one end of the land to the other) do not yield to him or listen to him. Show him no pity. Do not spare him or shield him. You must certainly put him to death. Your hand must be the first in putting him to death, and then the hands of all people. Stone him to death, because he tried to turn you away from the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. Then all Israel will hear and be afraid, and no one among you will do such an evil thing again.” The New International Version, The Holy Bible, Zondervan Corporation, 1988, 13:6-11, page 185.
[2] The Church of Christ, Scientist, followers are permitted in some states to have an exception to the obligation to provide medical treatment for their children by statute in spite of the knowledge that one or more of their children have died from a disease the medical profession could have easily cured. See Hermanson v State, 604 So. 2d 775 (Fla 1992) for a child who died in bed of infant diabetes while the parents and science practitioner prayed.
[3] Rumsfeld v Padilla. 542 US 426 (2004) Federal agents apprehended Padilla, a United States citizen, while executing a material witness warrant issued by the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York in connection with its grand jury investigation into the September 11, 2001, attacks. While Padilla’s motion to vacate the warrant was pending, President G. W. Bush issued an Order to Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld to designate Padilla an “enemy combatant” and directed that he be detained in military custody. Padilla was moved to a Navy brig in Charleston, S. C., where was held until 2004 without charges or arraignment. The Supreme Court refused to opine upon the Padella detention without the right to legal counsel and other rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution to United States citizens.
[4] Does this Law Degree Make My Resume Look Fat, Ann Coulter, October 12, 2005, Townhall.com
[5] The refusal of North Central University to permit the students, in what they offered in their catalog as a journalism class, to discuss the belief in speaking in tongues and gay life issues in their student newspaper.
[6] W. Mark Felt, the number two person in the Federal Bureau of Investigation commonly known as “deep throat”, refused to use the legal system to report misfeasance by the Nixon administration but rather went to the newspapers.
[7] The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; their respective Constitutions name Islam as the official religion.
[8] The US Constitution of 1787, Article IV, Section 2, provided: “No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.”
_____________________________________________________________
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
Washington, DC 20585
In the Matter of:
The Petition for Renewal of Recognition
by the American Bar Association, Council
of the Section of Legal Education and
Admissions to the Bar
Advisory Committe Meeting
December 4-6, 2006, Arlington, VA
CERTIFICATE OF SERVICE
On this 26th day of July, 2006, the undersigned certifies that a copy of the above Opposition of jefound.org and Scott was sent by email to: Robin.Greathouse@ed.gov and the original was by first class mail, postage prepaid to: Ms. Robin Greathouse at U. S. Department of Education, Room 7105, MS 8509, 1990 K Street, NW, Washington, DC 20006 and a copy by the same methods to: John Sebert, Consultant to the Council on Legal Education, Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, American Bar Association, 321 N. Clark Street, 21st Floor, Chicago, IL 60610.
/s/ William S. Scott
William Sumner Scott, J.D.