What Makes SLS Special: A Top Ten List

It isn’t easy being dean (see p. 28). But it’s been incredibly inspiring, rewarding, and fun. When I finish my term this September, I will miss it greatly. I will especially miss traveling the country to talk with our alumni and friends about the School. 

I have tried to keep my speeches fresh, and our students and faculty provide plenty of new material. But let’s face it, there are a few lines I’ve used a time or two. As I head into decanal twilight, I think back on various Sullivanisms by which I’ve tried to capture what makes our law school special. Here is an annotated top-10 list. 

  1. We may have warm weather, but we don’t have hot air. We have an unpretentious, friendly, collegial, academic culture. We emphasize what is practical and real. We insist on facts. We like our students. We aren’t stuffy. We believe that intellectual rigor can coexist with friendliness and civility. 
  2. We’re a lean mean teaching machine. Our law school is built around ideas. Unlike other parts of our great university, we don’t have labs. We don’t have athletic fields. We (sadly) don’t have a marching band. But we depend upon your support for the core of our budget, which is instruction. Our faculty really cares about teaching. And we continually expand the ambition and scope of what we teach. 
  3. We combine the classic and the cutting-edge in legal education. Our faculty still write and teach from leading casebooks on torts and evidence, copyright and constitutional law. But we also teach courses about cyberspace and biolaw and new international tribunals. And we use not only casebooks but websites, PowerPoint presentations, and film clips, and case studies based on real cases and real deals. 
  4. We teach both law and law-and. Law professors are a little bit like both priests and theologians, teaching students to perform legal rituals but also standing outside the law, using the tools of the humanities and social sciences to analyze and interpret it. Stanford’s law faculty, of whom over a fourth hold PhDs, strikes a unique balance between these professional and interdisciplinary values. 
  5. We have a tradition of innovation. Our law school is fortunate to be part of a great university that has always had a spirit of entrepreneurship. Silicon Valley got its start here. Stanford folks invent things in their own garages. Our law school too has a spirit of experimentation and flexibility. No idea is too new for us to try. 
  6. We’ve brought the students into the light. No, this does not refer to religious revelation, but rather to our 2001 renovation of the classrooms and our creation last year of a new bright and open reading room in the Robert Crown Law Library, both of which our students love. 
  7. We are the leading law school in California, the nation’s most diverse state. With the largest percentages of students and of faculty of color among our peer law schools, we are leaders in showing that excellence and diversity work hand in hand. 
  8. We are the leading American law school on the Pacific Rim. What was once a great regional law school is now a preeminent national law school. With expanded international course offerings, more faculty with international specialties, and two new LLM programs for foreign lawyers, we aim to be a great international law school as well. 
  9. Law is good. In any society, but especially one that is large and heterogeneous, lawyers are indispensable institutional designers, conflict preventers, and problem solvers in both the public and the private realms. The wide variety of your legal practice has taught me the many forms of good that lawyers do. 
  10. Who could resist a world-class law school in paradise? Okay, you saw that one coming. After all, it’s on our website, it’s spoofed in the school musical, and it’s in, well, all of my speeches. But let’s face it, it’s true! You couldn’t resist it, I couldn’t, and we’re all much the better for it. May Stanford Law School long enjoy its place in the sun.