The ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar has proposed a requirement that all law schools desiring ABA accreditation establish a written policy protecting academic freedom and free expression for all who work or study in those institutions. Faculty had long enjoyed such protection, but this proposal would extend it to students and staff.

The proposal was a reaction to a series of protests in recent years in which students had shouted down or otherwise disrupted appearances by controversial speakers. Last March, Judge Kyle Duncan of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit had to cut short his presentation at Stanford Law School when students in the audience began chanting, clapping, and banging on desks in protest. At Yale the year before, similar behavior by students disturbed, but did not prevent, a speech by Kristen Waggoner of the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative law group. Also in 2022, Ilya Shapiro, a professor on leave from Georgetown Law School, was prevented from taking part in a discussion at the University of California Hastings College of the Law by students who shouted, banged desks, and otherwise stifled his attempts to speak. To date, we are unaware of similar deplorable behavior at New Jersey law schools; however, rules at Rutgers (Newark and Camden) do provide sanctions for inappropriate conduct.

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