Arthur Goldberg Backs System Of Pass - Fail For Law Students

Former Supreme Court Justice Arthur J. Goldberg told an enthusiastic first-year law class yesterday that he favors an honors-pass-fail grading system for law schools.

Goldberg said the present grading system leads to two kinds of legal education--a superior one for students whose first-year grades qualify them for the Law Review, the mot prestigious student organization, and another for the rest of the student body. He added that he favors doing away with "Law reviews" at Harvard and other schools.

His recommendations went beyond the requests of a group of first-year students whose report on grading led to the formation of a faculty committee to study grading reform.

Goldberg was in Cambridge to judge the finals of the Ames Competition at the Law School last night. He volunteered his views on pass-fail before about the 1952 steel plant seizures in an afternoon class on Development of Law and Legal Institutions.

In reply to questions after the lecture, Goldberg said law firms would be willing to examine an applicant's portfolio, as the student report suggested, instead of relying on his grades. he said that when he taught a diplomacy course at a law school several years ago he found it was absurd to make fine distinctions among students.

Cut Classes

He also suggested that law students might attend only one-and-a-half years of classes. The rest of the three-year program could be spent working in communities for academic credit, he said.

The more than 400 students present responded to Goldberg's remarks with a standing ovation.

The faculty committee on grades met again last night. A group of second and third-year students presented the committee with a new report supporting the first-year students' requests for change.