Article. George runs the Otherwise Blog, which is worth checking out. Abstract:
Rutgers-Newark
Law School was the most innovative, exciting, and effective law school
in the 1960's and 1970's. Civil rights and liberties, 'poverty law',
women's rights, employment discrimination, open housing, and public
education were the foci of legal education at Rutgers - Which is the
State University of New Jersey. In those two decades Rutgers-Newark -
which we affectionately called People's Electric - developed a model of
engaged legal education that was and is unique.
No other law
school of its era - and perhaps since - to my knowledge has been so
thoroughly characterized by a broad progressive social agenda.
Affirmative action, racial justice, women’s rights, public education,
open housing, and civil liberties were the focus of the frequently
landmark litigation which originated or was substantially aided by
students and faculty from Rutgers Newark.
The unique activism of
Rutgers-Newark - a small public law school in an afflicted city - had a
huge impact in the development of the law. The activist faculty and the
clinics engaged law students deeply in innovative and intense
litigation regarding the most important and controversial issues of the
day. Students at People’s Electric learned first-hand the law-making
function of the courts. They often helped make that law. No other law
school in the country can begin to match its record in the 1970's. This
was accomplished without endowment, without a base of high ranking or
wealthy alumni, without a tradition of such activism at the school, a
public law school whose tuition was nominal. Students learned from
extraordinarily talented lawyers who they assisted. Their successes
showed students how to succeed by really trying. We left Rutgers
confident that we knew how to and could change the law, confident that
we could make a difference.
Graduates continued the mission in
many ways. One outstanding example is the cadre who joined the Office
of the Public Defender - a statewide agency - which led or participated
in the defense of over two hundred capital trials from 1982-2007 when
the death penalty was repealed and replaced with life without parole.
There were no executions.