« Game theory post 4 of N: extensive form games, a deep dive | Main | The process of marriage equality, once again »
Saturday, January 24, 2015
Law School Centers: The Good, the Not-So-Bad, and the Largely Unknown
I teach at a law school that does not have any centers. When I arrived, I noticed this and tried to change it. There is currently a large sign on my door that says “Future Home of the Wake Forest Constitutional Law Center.” Last spring, while I was out of the office one day, someone took a piece of paper, wrote the letters “U” and “N” on it in large type, and taped it in front of the word “Constitutional” on my sign. To be clear, I am not the director of any center. But someone out there thinks that the Wake Forest Unconstitutional Law Center exists, or at least thinks that it exists in my office.
Whenever I have visitors, they see my sign and invariably ask me about this non-existent entity. For example, last spring our dean’s office sent a prospective student to speak with me. The student told me that she was interested in election law and that she wanted to attend our law school to work with the Constitutional Law Center. I explained that this “center” was nothing more than a sign on my door. However, my honesty did not do much to sway the young woman, who later sent a thank-you letter to the dean, copying me, in which she explained how much she was looking forward to the opportunity of "participating in the life of the new Constitutional Law Center.”
That’s the power of ideas for you—or, at least, of signs.
So why do law school centers exist? Should law schools continue to have them? Do centers matter for purposes of ranking and perception? How are these centers run? Do the directors of the centers receive a reprieve from teaching? What is the budget of the typical center? And what do centers do for law schools that law schools cannot do all by themselves?
Here are at least some theories as to why law school centers exist:(1) To Signal a Specialty: A center can create the perception that a school has a niche in some area in which multiple faculty members specialize.
(2) To Promote the School’s Name in Another Form: Through its research and publications, a center independently promotes the name of the law school to which it is attached.
(3) To Help Recruit Faculty: A good way to hire laterally is to offer a potential recruit the directorship of a center, in addition to whatever else is on the table.
(4) To Help Recruit Students: Like the student who came to visit my office, above.
(5) Because Other Schools Have Centers: It's the same reason that countries have flags and national anthems and that the states have state birds and state mottos.
(6) To Help Create and Advance Specialized Knowledge: This one may seem obvious.
In a small survey of law school centers I did when I proposed the not-yet-existent Wake Forest (Un?) Constitutional Law Center, I found that centers were fairly ubiquitous across legal academia. Most schools had at least one, and many had many. Though they differ in focus, structure, and programming, I also found that most law school centers share some common characteristics. Most were headed by a Faculty Director, who was often supported by an Advisory Board, other Faculty, and Fellows. Most law schools centers perform three functions. They 1) sponsor faculty and student research; 2) bring legal scholars, practitioners, and jurists to campus; and 3) engage in a specialized local or national policy debate.
Among constitutional law centers, I found that several focused their work on a particular aspect of the field. For example, the Center for Constitutional Transitions at NYU works primarily with emerging democracies and assists in the drafting of constitutions. The Center for the Study of Constitutional Originalism at San Diego focuses on, well, originalist thought. However, most centers take a broader approach. They hold conferences on a wide variety of topics, engage in diverse scholarly research endeavors, and seek to invite guest lecturers in different areas of expertise to campus. The varying structures of these centers likely provide unique opportunities to their respective law schools. For example, the impressive Clough Center for the Study of Constitutional Democracy at Boston College serves as a kind of public intellectual's forum for that campus.
Really, centers are a terrific idea. Most centers cost little to run, and they attract widespread student and alumni interest. They can also help in fundraising, for example by providing a vehicle for naming rights. And they have the ability to place a law school on equal footing with its peers. But before I conclude that there is no reason not to open a center, it would be helpful to hear other views. Should we let a thousand centers bloom in the legal academy or not?
Posted by Eugene Mazo on January 24, 2015 at 05:24 PM in Life of Law Schools | Permalink
Comments
Hi Folks: I have questions about the advantages or disadvantages of having centers or institutes, and I would like to ask for your thoughts, particularly from those of you who are associated with centers/institutes.
(1) Assume that faculty members are doing outside work (presumably within the boundaries of accreditation guidelines and the law school's rules); assume that the faculty members are receiving payment, not through the law school, for that outside work; if the outside work (e.g., writing reports for a non-profit think tank or helping to write a constitution for an emerging democracy) is related to the mission of the law school, does transferring the work to, or filtering the work through, a center/institute, change anything? One clear possibility is that the university and the law school would seek a percentage of the payment.
(2) Another variation on the theme is that some professors are doing a great deal of outside work -- other than "traditional" scholarship (e.g., pro bono litigation, other legal advocacy work in the community) -- without getting paid. Does creating a center or institute have an effect, positive or negative, on the law school culture of doing good work in the community?
(3) At my law school, we do not have separately constituted centers or institutes. Several years ago, we received a multi-year donation to support and to expand work that my clinic is doing. The work that is the focus of the donation is not, however, just the central work of representing individual clients and training law students to do that representation. The donation is supporting systems-change work. We named an "institute" after the entity that contributed the funds. We have not separately incorporated the institute. What are the advantages and disadvantages of creating a separately incorporated entity?
(4) Over the years, a few other clinical teachers and I have raised money from foundations and other outside funders to support the work of some of our clinics. The fundraising typically creates additional deliverables for the clinic that gets the funding, and writing and maintaining grants also requires more work for the individual clinician. The extra work might act, over time, as a disincentive to professors who initially decided to do this extra fundraising. Have your law school faculty members and administrators developed rules or guidelines that account for the added work for those who run (and do fundraising for) centers or institutes?
Posted by: Joe Tulman | Feb 18, 2015 3:15:59 PM
Eh, I dunno, "centers" seem like a good excuse to put on symposia, give out extra titles or donor naming rights, and get other parts of a university interested in the law school. They're probably a net good.
Then again, at some law schools, the law school is the law center (LOL GEORGETOWN).
Posted by: Some People Graduated from Law Center | Jan 26, 2015 10:31:08 PM
Isn't "Center" also a signal that a law school, or a major law school donor, is making a major commitment to a legal aid clinic? Two examples:
In Chicago, the Arthur Kane Center for Clinical Legal Education supports the Mandel Legal Aid Clinic.
In Boston, there is the WilmerHale Legal Services Center.
Posted by: Mark Regan | Jan 25, 2015 2:41:57 PM
Sorry. It appears the first link in my comment is not working properly. You can reach the website for the Clayton Center of Entrepreneurial Law at http://law.utk.edu/centers-clinics/clayton-center/.
Posted by: Joan Heminway | Jan 25, 2015 12:42:10 PM
Thanks for this post. The point is, I suppose, not whether to have a center--or institute, or other named part of a law school. The point is what a center might give the institution and whether those benefits are worth the costs of establishing one. Your post and the comments to date point out a number of those benefits and costs.
I teach in a business law center (http://law.utk.edu/centers-clinics/clayton-center/), one of two centers at The University of Tennessee College of Law. The center has a director, administrative assistant, and affiliated faculty. It houses a curriculum that leads to a concentration in business transactions, a law journal that publishes faculty and student work, a speaker series, a distinguished visitor program, and other programs. The main reason why we have a center is to foster and highlight education and research on transactional business law. It also has provided us with other benefits you mention in the post, including the development (fundraising) benefit that you mention at the end of the post. (One exception: I believe that at the time we established our business law center, there weren't other ones out there. So, we did not establish it because we were following a trend. I'd like to think maybe we helped to start one!)
However, there is another reason why law school centers exist. Campus structures and cultures also contribute to the formation and existence of centers. The University of Tennessee, Knoxville campus, of with the College of Law is a part, has a pro-center culture. See http://research.utk.edu/centers/. Centers must meet certain criteria and are subject to periodic review. This means that they have a particular signaling function on our campus. So, campus structures and cultures are also in play here.
I agree with Orin that using a center name for marketing purposes is a bad idea and can do more harm to an institution than good.
Again, thanks for this post.
Posted by: Joan Heminway | Jan 25, 2015 12:38:38 PM
I wonder if one useful function of a "center" is to attract donor funding. I suspect donors typically like to "get" something in return, and naming a "center" after them might be something that loosens pursestrings, especially if the name/mission of the center fits with the donor's policy/research interests. I imagine some donors would be more excited about naming a "center" than naming a "chair", as a "chair" seems more like a purely private benefit provided to a particular individual, while a "center" would seem to imply a broader, maybe more public-oriented mission.
How centers are funded seems an important issue. Some centers may be set up with the expectation that they raise all or most of their own money (e.g. through intra-campus grants, perhaps through outside funding), though here you would hope there would be a plan as to what do to if funding dries up. Others may be set up with a substantial, quasi-permanent financial commitment from the law school's general budget. I think the latter kind can be problematic if they end up serving to divert community money (that could be distributed for intellectual-development, faculty support, speaker series, and other uses through normal faculty committees and the like) to particular individuals ("directors") who are able to capture the center and use it to primarily fund activities in their own area of interest. Such fiefdoms can be difficult to shut down. On the other hand, creating a fiefdom may very well be the point if the center and its funding line are intended to act as a recruitment/retention tool. But in general, where the center is subsidized by the law school, and/or where the center directorship comes with perks (e.g. summer salary, course release, significant discretion as to how to direct the budget) I think it is wise to make the center's budget transparent to other faculty and to have an acceptable and clear system of rotation for the directorship.
Posted by: jason yackee | Jan 25, 2015 12:08:13 PM
Law school centers come in all shapes and sizes, but I would distinguish two basic kinds of centers. Some centers are real things. They have offices and employees, and they produce reports and bring together visiting scholars and experts to the school. Those are good things. They're expensive, but valuable. On the other hand, some centers are just marketing gimmicks. They are just a website homepage, perhaps with some nice letterhead, often designed to create an impression to outsiders that the school has a special focus or area of expertise that the school actually doesn't have.
The latter kind of center is a problem. Prospective students often have a hard time telling the difference between the first kind of center and the second kind. They can be misled by the existence of a "center" into thinking that they should enroll in a particular school so they can learn about topic X at the "center" there. They might turn down a school that is stronger in topic X in favor of the school that has a "center" in topic X, only to realize the mistake later on. Your example of a student who wanted to come to your school to work at the non-existent "constitutional law center" showcases the problem. Prospective students assume, reasonably enough, that a "center" for something at a university is an actual thing. When it's not the case, it's a serious disservice to the student.
Posted by: Orin Kerr | Jan 24, 2015 10:36:13 PM
"Prospective": Thank you for this thoughtful post. (I also fixed the misspelled word in the original; thank you for catching that.) There are certainly detractors from centers. I've heard many. An oft-heard criticism is that faculty directors tend to get different treatment, including lighter loads, which have to be picked up by others. Others argue that centers do not add pedagogical value. Indeed, a center may even take away from it. Let's see what others say.
Posted by: Eugene Mazo | Jan 24, 2015 7:37:23 PM
I am more dubious. In order:
"(1) To Signal a Specialty: A center can create the perception that a school has a niche in some area in which multiple faculty members specialize." Indeed, it is about creating a perception, rather than acknowledging a genuine niche or relative advantage, and there need be no more than one faculty member or administrator involved. What school could not suggest a constitutional law center?
"(2) To Promote the School’s Name in Another Form: Through its research and publications, a center independently promotes the name of the law school to which it is attached." Maybe. If the name is sufficiently distinct, it risks diluting the school's recognition. Otherwise, not clear what it does beyond the professor and affiliation.
"(3) To Help Recruit Faculty: A good way to hire laterally is to offer a potential recruit the directorship of a center, in addition to whatever else is on the table." Sometimes true, though it is just as often the case that the leading faculty want nothing to do with the actual work, and instead want to have administrative assistance or an extra stipend. Herein lie costs.
"(4) To Help Recruit Students: Like the student who came to visit my office, above." It isn't easy to justify this as a basis for students to select schools. It may explain something real, but not to be encouraged.
"(5) Because Other Schools Have Centers: It's the same reason that countries have flags and national anthems and that the states have state birds and state mottos." Fair enough. Also, other schools have stipends. Cheaper to adopt a law school bird.
"(6) To Help Create and Advance Specialized Knowledge: This one may seem obvious." Not so obvious. What does a center -- versus a faculty member interested in working in a particular area, securing grants, overseeing student work, conducting conferences -- do?
Centers have virtues, but they also have vices. Cost is one. Entrenchment is another; they tend to outlive their purpose (including the faculty they are intended to accommodate). Diversion is another; once there are several running around, there are more mouths to feed, and it becomes harder to focus on newer and higher priority initiatives.
Posted by: "Prospective" not "perspective" | Jan 24, 2015 7:09:59 PM
The comments to this entry are closed.