Detroit's Wayne State University Law School

Future Leaders in the Legal Community

Alan Schenk, Tracy Cox

• Publisher: Wayne State University Press
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9780814347621
• Topic: Jura
• Subtopic: Rechtserziehung

Most histories of law schools focus on the notable deans and professors, and the changes in curricula over time. In Detroit's Wayne State University Law School: Future Leaders in the Legal Community, Alan Schenk highlights the students and their influence on the school's development, character, and employment opportunities. Detroit's Wayne State University Law School begins by placing the school in historical context. Public law schools in major American cities were rare in the 1920s. WSU Law School started as a night-only school on the brink of the Great Depression. It was administered by the Detroit Board of Education's Colleges of the City of Detroit and was minimally funded out of student tuition and fees. From its opening days, the school admitted students who had the required college credits, without regard to their gender, race, or ethnic backgrounds, when many law schools restricted or denied admission to women, people of color, and Jewish applicants. The school maintained its steadfast commitment to a racially and gender-diverse student body, though it endured significant challenges along the way. Denied employment at selective law firms and relegated to providing basic legal services, WSU law students pressed the school to expand the curriculum and establish programs that provided them with the credentials afforded graduates from elite law schools. It took the persistence of the students and a persuasive dean to change the conversation about the quality of the graduates and for law firms representing the largest corporations and wealthiest individuals to start hiring WSU graduates who now heavily populate those firms. In the twenty-first century, the school gained strength in international legal studies and established two law centers that reflect the institution's longstanding commitment to public interest and civil rights. While much of the material was gathered from university and law school archives, valuable information was derived from the author's recorded interviews with alumni, deans, and professors. This book will strike the hearts of WSU law school students and alumni, as well as those interested in urban legal education and history.

1

A Public Law School in Detroit

This chapter documents the dogged determination of Allan Campbell to establish a public law school in the City of Detroit. Campbell, a practicing lawyer, taught part-time at the Detroit College of Law (DCL) and served on the governing board of the Detroit Board of Education, including as chair.

Campbell believed that practicing lawyers lacked sufficient pre–law school education, with many completing only high school before starting to apprentice or attend law school. He wanted the Michigan legislature to mandate more pre-law education as a prerequisite before a person could take the bar examination and practice law. His dream was to have a better-educated bar with high moral and legal standards.1 He felt that the leader of a public law school in Detroit would have the independence to press for those higher standards.

In 1920, there were approximately 122,000 lawyers in the country, with 9 percent belonging to the ABA and only about 20 percent belonging to state and local bar associations. The ABA was becoming an independent professional organization, transitioning from an amalgamation of members of state and local bar associations. The ABA began accrediting law schools in 1921, and law schools wanted that imprimatur. The ABA accredited 41 schools that first year; all of them were, like the University of Michigan, university-associated law schools. In 1922, an ABA-sponsored Conference of Bar Association Delegates endorsed the ABA position that every person fit to practice law should be required to graduate from a law school and pass a bar examination administered by a public authority.

Campbell’s aim to have better-educated Michigan lawyers was consistent with the goals of the law school accrediting agencies—the ABA and the Association of American Law Schools (AALS).2 The ABA in particular was working to toughen law school entrance requirements by raising the standards a law school had to meet to receive and retain ABA accreditation. By 1927, a resolution of the ABA’s Section on Legal Education deemed that “all applicants for admission to the bar [should have] two years of college work before the beginning of the study of law.” The AALS member law schools also required applicants to have completed half of the course work toward a bachelor’s degree.3 Since the tuition cost for any college prerequisite might be a financial barrier for some prospective law students, the ABA resolution added that each state should establish “opportunities for a collegiate training, free or at moderate cost . . . [to] obtain an adequate preliminary education.”4

In 1920, the seven largest U.S. cities by population did not have a public law school. New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, Cleveland, St. Louis, and Boston had only private or faith-based law schools. Among the twelve largest cities, the University of Maryland, Baltimore, the University of Pittsburgh, and the University of California-Hastings School of Law in San Francisco operated state-supported, public law schools.5

In the mid-1920s, in New York City (the largest U.S. city),6 Chicago (second largest city), and Detroit (fourth largest city), the Boards of Education were providing public education beyond high school, but none offered a legal education. Cincinnati, the sixteenth largest city, operated the municipally funded University of Cincinnati Law School.

At the time, there were three law schools in Michigan, two of which were in Detroit. The University of Michigan Law Department, the oldest and only public law school, was established in 1859 as a full-time day program in Ann Arbor.7 The University of Detroit Law School, a Jesuit school with both a day and an evening program, admitted its first class in 1912. The Detroit College of Law (DCL), which offered daytime and evening law classes to working-class students, started its program in 18918 and in 1926 became affiliated with the Young Men’s Christian Association.9

DCL’s history in the dozen years leading up to 1927 influenced the establishment of what became Wayne State University Law School. It was not uncommon during that period for proprietary law schools to be operated by individual lawyers or law firms. Until 1915, DCL (established as a private corporation) was operated by “Malcolm McGregor and William C. Wetherbee.” In 1915, during John Bills’s interim deanship, DCL was transferred to the YMCA. In 1917, William Krichbaum became dean and, in the ensuing years, the law school experienced financial difficulty.10 In 1924, the law school moved and shared space with the other programs operated by the Y.

In 1926, Campbell and several of his part-time DCL colleagues proposed to the Detroit Board of Education that it absorb DCL.11 Campbell and a few other popular DCL adjunct professors were concerned that the YMCA was not devoting adequate financial resources to the law program. In addition, DCL students complained about the school’s inadequate and poorly ventilated classrooms. The Board of Education operated a teacher’s college to supply teachers for the city’s elementary and secondary schools. It also operated a medical and pharmacy school and a liberal arts college that had expanded from a two-year junior college.12 Detroit’s population grew by almost 60 percent between 1920 and 1930,13 attributable in part to the influx of workers drawn to jobs in the automobile industry. With the arrival of these workers and their families, the Detroit Board of Education needed to serve an expanding elementary and secondary school population.

Some members of the board opposed the proposal to acquire DCL. They wanted the board to focus its resources on its elementary and secondary schools and its teacher’s college. The proposal was defeated, but possibly in deference to Campbell’s position on the board, it included $25,000 in its upcoming budget as the estimated cost of offering some law courses through its liberal arts–oriented College of the City of Detroit.14

Undeterred, in early 1927, a group led by Campbell15 approached the board again, but this time proposing that the board establish its own law school. Campbell’s idea was controversial within the board, in the Detroit legal community, and on the Detroit City Council. Detroit Councilman Phillip A. Callahan thought that spending money on a third law school in Detroit was not a good use of the board’s resources. Board member John Hall thought that the proposal was being discussed without giving the board the required notice.16 Some practicing lawyers, perhaps concerned about increased competition from more lawyers, opposed a third law school in the city.17

Campbell, having served on the board since 1921, knew how to frame his group’s request so that they could secure three affirmative votes out of six on the Board (his would be the fourth). The school would pay the salaries for the predominantly part-time faculty of practicing lawyers and judges entirely from student fees. The group would pledge its credit “to buy a $10,000 law library.”18 This cost also would be repaid out of future student fees.19 Campbell and his colleagues asked the board to make only two commitments:

1. 1. Obtain authority from the state to issue diplomas so that the law school graduates could qualify to take the Michigan bar examination.20
2. 2. Provide some classroom and administrative space in Old Main, where the board’s other colleges held their classes.

On June 9, 1927,21 by a vote of 4 to 2, the board approved “The Detroit City Law School [DCLS] as a part of the Educational System of the City of Detroit.”22 Campbell, the chair, cast one of the four positive votes.

The law school had to be financially self-sustaining,23 while committed to providing a quality legal education to its mainly “self-supporting students.”24 The law school was to operate under the board’s auspices, but it was not included in its budget.

The board had two strategic reasons for not including the new law school as a formal part of its colleges. The board’s budget had to be approved by the Detroit City Council, and if the law school were included in the budget, the council could delete that budget item and thereby prevent the school from opening. In addition, for the board to maintain accreditation for its colleges, the col...