preLaw - Back to School 2007 - (Page 12) news LAW SCHOOL group’s membership policies were based on belief and behavior rather than status, and no language in SIU’s [affirmative action] policy prohibits this,” according to an Associated Press article. Casey Mattox, litigation counsel for the society’s Center for Law and Religious Freedom, said schools are starting to get the message that they can’t exclude Christian organizations from campus. In the last year, CLRF represented not only CLS organizations, but also other Christian groups such as Beta Upsilon Chi, a fraternity at the University of Georgia. Mattox said sometimes information isn’t made clear in school policies, and he wouldn’t be surprised if the lawsuits didn’t go away. CLS has had many legal woes. The University of California Hastings College of Law denied the Christian organization recognition in 2004 as an official campus organization. CLS lost that suit, in which the ruling was appealed and referred to the 9th Circuit. Hastings officials believed the organization discriminated against students in “the selection of its members and officers on the basis of religion and sexual orientation.” The Christian Legal Society is based in Springfield, Va., and is a nationwide association of more than 3,400 Christian lawyers, law students, law professors and judges with chapters in more than 1,100 cities across the country. —Michelle Weyenberg long and hard to earn this provisional approval from the ABA, and we look forward to our first group of students taking the bar exam,” said Dennis Shields, dean at the Arizona for-profit law school. An ABA panel reviewed Phoenix based on factors such as its curriculum, facility, library, admissions and faculty. After three years of maintaining the ABA’s standards for these factors, a law school is eligible for full accreditation. A school that is provisionally approved is entitled to all the rights of a fully approved law school, said ABA spokeswoman Nancy Slonim. As a result, graduates of provisionally approved law schools receive the same recognition given to graduates of fully approved schools, such as permission to take the Bar exam. Other than Phoenix, no law schools have received provisional accreditation so far this year, Slonim said. Six schools received provisional accreditation last year. Phoenix School of Law gains ABA accreditation Phoenix School of Law received provisional accreditation from the American Bar Association in June and hopes to receive full accreditation in 2010. “Everyone at Phoenix Law has worked UNLV.indd 1 12 preLaw 9/21/06 9:09:47 AM www.preLawInsider.com http://law.ulv.edu http://law.ulv.edu http://www.preLawInsider.com
For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.