University of Michigan Law School

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Entrance north side of the Law Quadrangles
University of Michigan Law Library

The University of Michigan Law School is part of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor , Michigan , USA .

Academic profile

The law school was founded in 1859 and currently has approximately 1,200 students. The majority of students are aiming for the American Juris Doctor (JD) degree , a small number of mostly foreign students are enrolled in the Master of Laws (LL.M.) or Doctor of the Science of Law (SJD) program. The University of Michigan School of Law specializes in international law (taught by the German judge at the IGH , Bruno Simma ) and interdisciplinary aspects of law.

In 2004, 72 full-time professors and 42 visiting or associate professors researched and taught at the University of Michigan Law School. Since its inception, the University of Michigan Law School has been one of the most prestigious in the USA and regularly achieves top positions in the relevant rankings. The same applies to the library of the University of Michigan Law School, which contains almost one million volumes [as of August 2006] and, in a current study, ranks 4th out of 183 legal libraries examined.

Architectural importance

The Gothic-style buildings of the University of Michigan Law School form the so-called Law Quadrangle, one of the most remarkable legal campuses in the USA from an architectural point of view. The Law Quadrangle was built between 1924 and 1933 according to plans by New York architects Yorke & Sawyer. The University of Michigan Law School owes its idea and funding to a generous donation from its alumnus William W. Cook, who bequeathed all of his fortune, based on today's value of over 240 million US dollars, to the faculty. Most of the four buildings of the Law Quadrangle are still used today according to the original plan and therefore house lecture halls, offices and a library as well as a dormitory, dining room and social and club rooms for the students. The steadily growing library made it necessary to partially relocate the holdings in 1981. In order to preserve the uniformity of the Gothic Law Quadrangle, architect Gunnar Birkerts resorted to an underground solution that still allows natural sunlight to reach the majority of the workplaces. For this spectacular design, Birkerts was awarded the Arnold W. Brunner Prize of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters .

Affirmative action controversy

In 2003, the University of Michigan Law School's admissions policy was the subject of a landmark decision by the US Supreme Court , the United States' highest court in the Grutter v. Bollinger decided that the ethnic affiliation of the applicants can be used as a criterion in the admission decision, thus maintaining the affirmative-action policy pursued , which aimed at promoting black and other minority applicants . Even if the affirmative-action policy of the University of Michigan Law School no longer met with concerns with regard to the Federal Constitution, it continued to meet with resistance from the unsuccessful plaintiffs as well as from parts of the population of Michigan. On November 7, 2006, a referendum initiated by Barbara Grutter and Jennifer Gratz, among others, was successful, after which the constitution of the state of Michigan is to be changed so that admission decisions by public educational institutions, in particular the University of Michigan and the University of Michigan Law School, applicants may not be granted preferential treatment based on race, origin or other ethnic criteria. Several lawsuits are currently pending against the constitutional amendment originally scheduled to come into force on December 22, 2006. On December 19, 2006, the US District Court of the Eastern District of Michigan ruled that at least the University of Michigan and two other public universities in the state are allowed to maintain the previous admission practice until the decision on the main issue.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ National Jurist . Oct. 2004, 2004, p. 12.

literature

  • Kathryin Horste: The Michigan Law Quadrangle: Architecture and Origins . University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor 1997, ISBN 0-472-10749-6 .

Web links

Coordinates: 42 ° 16'26.9 "  N , 83 ° 44'21.6"  W.