Eagleionline

By Jesse Stellato, March 26, 2008 

In a speech in January at the 2008 Annual Meeting of the American Association of Law Schools (AALS) in New York Dean of Boston College Law School and AALS President John Garvey talked about shifting the axis of the legal academy’s discussion over diversity. Instead of focusing on diversity within law schools, Garvey talked about cultivating the differences among them.

Entitled “Institutional Pluralism,” the speech has not been reported publicly before, but will be published in its entirety in the February 2008 issue of the AALS Newsletter. Eagleionline will link directly to that article as soon as it becomes available.

Garvey began his January remarks by noting how honored he was to be selected President of AALS and, with a nod to his self-professed conservatism, called himself “an unlikely candidate” for the position.

“I sometimes feel as though my relation to the Association has been like Disraeli’s to Gladstone – the leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition,” he said.

Garvey then began to sketch out his central thesis by first explaining what religiously affiliated law schools meant to him. Religiously affiliated law schools, Garvey said, provide a place for “comprehensive wisdom” in legal education. This comprehensive wisdom, he implied, involved integrating one’s faith into one’s studies.

“There is a connection between law and theology,” he stated.

Then, Garvey recalled how his understanding of religiously affiliated law schools evolved. Upon talking with others in the legal profession, Garvey discovered that such religious affiliations were the “subset of an even larger idea,” to wit, that law schools sometimes have a special mission to serve underserved populations.

Garvey then compared religiously affiliated schools with those schools, like Howard Law School, that were originally affiliated on the basis on race.

Schools like Howard, said Garvey, are similar to religiously affiliated schools in that 1) “they have a distinctive mission and point of view that influences the intellectual culture”; 2) that such mission and a culture “may have an impact on the subject matter of the curriculum”; and 3) that such schools hold a special appeal for some groups of faculty and students.

Complementing law schools that have a special mission to serve underserved populations are schools with a unique point of view, such as George Mason and its “antonym” Antioch (now UDC); schools with a special subject matter, such as environmental law (e.g. Vermont, Lewis & Clark) and intellectual property (e.g. Franklin Pierce); and state schools that cater to state-wide, as opposed to national, interests.

In the universe of law schools, Garvey concluded, there is “a kind of institutional pluralism.”

Garvey then offered five ways that institutional pluralism would contribute to the “progress of legal thought.” Briefly summarized and paraphrased, Garvey’s argued that collective intellectual efforts brings forth more data, creates synergies in analyzing that data, and tends to present that analysis in uniquely stylized and cohesive way.

Garvey also admitted that he had some doubts about his idea of institutional pluralism. First, Garvey said that institutional pluralism might be impossible due to homogenizing influences, such as faculties’ sharing of alma maters and law schools’ susceptibility to commercially popular ranking systems. Still, Garvey noted that these sort of objections might have less force in the future.

”It may be that we are better able, at half a century’s remove, to resist the temptation to all be like Harvard,” he said.

Second, Garvey said that institutional pluralism might a “bad idea.” Maybe the best way to discover truth, Garvey wondered, is “out of a multitude of tongues.”

In a similar vein, Garvey summarized John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty. In that book, Mill theorized that dissent was healthy for liberal societies, because dissent tended to expose dead dogma and, even if such dissenting opinions were untrue, tended to reinforce the truth — one understands that truth better if one is must defend it. However, Garvey, suggested that this objection was a “red herring.”

“Its not clear that Mill’s argument entails protection for dissent at every level,” Garvey said, adding that “a distinctive institutional culture is not inconsistent with individual freedom of inquiry.”

“Collaboration is not control,” he stressed.

In conclusion, Garvey acknowledged the “uncertainty” in his voice about his suggestions. Still, he said that he believed that thinking more about institutional pluralism would be healthy, both for students and for the intellectual life of the academy.

Garvey concluded, “Schools don’t need to compete on the same track to succeed.”