As the main accreditation body for American law schools, the ABA has considerable influence over legal education. Via Brian Leiter, I learn that:
Law schools will now be asked to explicitly protect free speech rights for faculty, students and staff as part of the ABA accreditation process. Though law school faculty have long enjoyed protections for academic freedom, this would be the first accreditation standard to address free speech for the entire community within law schools.
Leiter observes that:
... what's new here is the protection for free speech rights, not academic freedom, which faculty already enjoy in almost all (maybe all) law schools by contract or as a matter of constitutional right at public law schools. Under the AAUP definition of academic freedom, faculty are protected from sanction for their extramural speech, e.g., on political or other topics. In effect, this new provision appears to extend that protection to students and staff at a law school.
Still, it may supplement the academic freedom guarantee for faculty and help protect faculty from being thrown under the bus by spineless administrators.
Moreover, I am somewhat troubled because the new policy requires law schools to protect speech communicated through "demonstrations or protests." Would protestors now be allowed to march into a classroom and disrupt the class?
