6 Profs Weigh Leaving Over Law School Battle

As many as six senior Law School faculty members, opposed to administrative maneuvers by the school's radical professors, are considering appointments at other, more conservative law schools, professors said yesterday.

Although only one of the six has already decided to leave the University, professors said the other tenured professors are entertaining job possibilities at schools such as Stanford, Yale, Columbia and the University of Chicago.

The six constitute one-tenth of the tenured law faculty.

Their deliberations come during one of the most intense academic and administrative disputes in the school's history. The faculty has split into radical and anti-radical factions over the appointment of new faculty members and the growth of Critical Legal Studies (CLS), a progressive field which questions the basic tenets of law and legal scholarship.

Many conservative and moderate professors cite the attitudes of Harvard's radical legal scholars and the school's guidelines for granting promotions as reasons for their dissatisfaction. They charge that Harvard is now the most liberal law school in the country and that some professors are using the democratic system of appointments to keep it that way.

The faculty has not attracted a top legal scholar from outside Harvard since 1981, and subsequently most life-long appointments have gone to junior faculty members already at the school. Disen-

"In other schools, there is a better working relationship between professors, who get along with CLS professors just fine," said Clark.

"The appointments problem here is a major thing," Clark added. "I don't like spending my time on academic politics, it's not productive and it's not what constitutes a good working relationship."

CLS Responsible

Several professors, including Bator, have said that recent CLS scholarship lacks integrity and does not speak well for Harvard, the stronghold of CLS. Bator's new school, the University of Chicago, is considered much more conservative with only a small CLS representation.

In a recent debate on the subject, Bator described CLS as "reductionist." Although he said the founding fathers of CLS were "brilliant," he called second and third generation scholarship in the area "thin and unsatisfying."

But his and other professors' main objection is that the radical "program has led them to subordinate academic ideals and standards to political ideals and standards." For this reason, Bator charged in the debate, CLS has had a "disastrous effect on the intellectual and institutional life of Harvard Law School."

Shavell alleged that since CLS professors disregard much previous scholarship, they "are much less willing to look at indexes of merit."

"I believe the quality of the faculty has been and will continue to be lowered if the school makes appointments that the CLS group favors," said Shavell.

"I am not at all confident that [the appointments problem] will work itself out," Shavell said. "It is certainly possible that some professors will leave Harvard."

Clark, who chairs the school's Lateral Appointments Committee, which offers positions to faculty members already established at other schools, said many professors who have been offered a position here have refused because of the CLS dispute. He also said Harvard's radical professors, with a few exceptions, have made it difficult to select qualified professors in the first place.

"There is no quick solution to the problem," said Clark. "I hope over time that the Law School will get strong representation from other intellectual movements in the world, not just CLS. Then we could have some genuine diversity" which might soften the radical perspective, he said.

Clark also suggested that administrative intervention is necessary. He said the dean should require outside peer review of tenure candidates, as is done in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and should lessen the power of individual professors to choose their own colleagues.

Dean of the Law School James Vorenberg '49 refused to comment yesterday on either the actions of the six professors or possible administrative reforms in the tenure process. Professors have said, however, that they expect no immediate changes from the dean's office.

Other top Law School administrators also refused to comment. One administrator, however, who asked not to be identified, said "Bator was a major loss, and if it is true that other professors are looking elsewhere, then we have a major problem."

Several leading CLS scholars, including Professor of Law Duncan M. Kennedy '64 and Professor of Law Morton J. Horowitz, either could not be reached or refused to comment on the six professors or charges that the CLS effort has damaged the school's tenure process.

In previous statements, however, Kennedy has called the growth of CLS a "natural transition process" towards a better system of legal education. In a debate with Bator and others, Kennedy called unfounded allegations that CLS representatives have only supported allies for tenure.

Door Number Three

Some professors, not directly associated with either CLS or the anti-CLS group, said they believe the controversy has made Harvard Law School one of the most exciting and vibrant places to teach and learn.

"Today, I think Harvard Law School is a rich, more diverse, more vibrant, innovative place," Frankfurter Professor of Law Abram Chayes '43 said last spring.

"Duncan Kennedy is not the first flaky radical that ever stepped onto the Harvard faculty," Chayes said in the debate last spring. "The Harvard Law School has had, thank God, a tradition of criticism of the society, of criticism of the legal system. That is the excuse for having an academic law school, a law school in a university, rather than a trade school.