The Moral Responsibility of Law Schools

Editors note: This article is an abridged version of the address Dean Sandalow delivered at the plenary session of the 1984 annual meeting of the Association of American Law Schools. The full text appears in the June issue of the Journal of Legal Education. The subject I have been asked to address, the moral responsibility of law schools, is perplexing, less because answers to the implicit question are uncertain than because the meaning of the question itself is unclear. Our ideas about moral responsibility have been formed in reference to individuals.

They presuppose the existence of distinctively human characteristics such as understanding or will. What, then, can be meant by the moral responsibility of "law schools," institutions that, just because they are not human, necessarily lack these capacities?