| Columbia Law School | |
| Established | 1858 |
|---|---|
| School type | Private |
| Parent endowment | $7.8 billion |
| Dean | David Schizer |
| Location | New York City, New York, US |
| Enrollment | 1,267[1] |
| Faculty | 216[1] |
| USNWR ranking | 4[2] |
| Bar pass rate | 95.6%[1] |
| Annual tuition | $51,080[3] |
| Website | www.law.columbia.edu |
| ABA profile | Columbia Law School Profile |
Columbia Law School, founded in 1858, is one of the oldest and most prestigious law schools in the United States. A member of the Ivy League, Columbia Law School is one of the professional graduate schools of Columbia University in New York City. It offers the J.D., LL.M., and J.S.D. degrees in law.
Ever since U.S. News & World Report began ranking law schools in 1987, Columbia Law has appeared in the Top 5 every single year, an honor shared only with Yale, Harvard, and Stanford.[4] U.S. News & World Report consistently places Columbia Law among the top four law schools (for both academic reputation and overall national standing).[5] Columbia Law is ranked #3 for highest earning law graduates in the nation by Forbes Magazine, ahead of both Harvard and Yale, and U.S. News and World Report ranks Columbia Law #4 in its 2011 Law Firm Recruiters' Ranking of Best Law Schools. [6][7]
Columbia has graduated more Supreme Court Justices than any other institution except Yale and Harvard law schools. More current members of the Forbes 400 attended Columbia than any other law school.[8] Admission to Columbia Law is among the most selective in the U.S., with only 12% of applicants being accepted in 2010. Notably, the law school ranked #2 in the 2011 U.S. News report of "Law Schools that Receive the Most Applications."[9] Columbia is historically the highest ranked law school in its home state of New York and also has the highest average pass rate for the New York bar (95.6%).[10]
Columbia ranked #1 in The National Law Journal survey of "Go-To Law Schools" two years in a row (2007, 2008) for having the highest percentage of graduates hired by the nation's top 250 law firms (#2 in 2009).[11] Professor Brian Leiter's law school rankings (the respected alternative to the U.S. News survey) also ranked Columbia #1 (for the years 2006 through 2009) for job placement at the nation's "most prestigious" law firms and, for the past several years (2005–2010), #3 for student numerical quality (average LSAT/GPA), surpassed only by Yale and Harvard.[12][13]
Columbia has produced a large number of distinguished alumni including, among others: two Presidents of the United States (Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Theodore Roosevelt); nine Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States (three of whom were Chief Justices);[14] numerous U.S. Cabinet members and Presidential advisers; U.S. Senators, Representatives, and Governors; members of the federal trial and appellate courts; academicians and diplomats, and civil rights and human rights activists. Alumni of the Law School have been the president or founder of more than thirty colleges and universities in the nation.
For its teaching and scholarship, Columbia is lauded in corporate and securities law, international and comparative law, intellectual property, public interest and human rights law, and legal history and legal theory — administrative law, constitutional law, criminal law and procedure, critical race theory, and gender studies and family law, among others, are also exceptionally strong.[15] Columbia, well known for corporate law, has a storied job placement rate at the nation's top law firms.[12]
The teaching of law at Columbia reaches back to the 18th century. Graduates of the university's colonial predecessor, King's College, included such notable early American judicial figures as John Jay, who would later become the first chief justice of the United States Supreme Court. Columbia College appointed its first professor of law, James Kent, in 1793, but the formal instruction of law was suspended for some time during the early decades of the 19th century.
A revival of interest resulted in the formal establishment of the law school in 1858. The first law school building was a Gothic Revival structure located on Columbia's Madison Avenue campus. Thereafter, the college became Columbia University and moved north to the neighborhood of Morningside Heights.
In the 1920s and 30s, the law school soon became known for the development of the legal realism movement. Among the major realists affiliated with Columbia Law School were Karl Llewellyn, Felix S. Cohen and William O. Douglas.[16]
In September 1988, Columbia Law School founded the first AIDS Law Clinic in the country, taught by Professor Deborah Greenberg and Mark Barnes.[17]
Today, Columbia Law School is well regarded in a number of different areas, including—but not limited to—notable scholars in the following legal disciplines, and several of the faculty are recipients of the MacArthur Fellows Program "genius grant":
Widely cited scholars in other specialties include Robert E. Scott (contract law); Lance Liebman (employment law); Michael I. Sovern (labor law); Matthew Waxman (national security law); Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, Patricia J. Williams (critical race theory, gender ); Michael A.Heller (real estate law); Henry P. Monaghan (federal courts and civil procedure); and Marvin Chirelstein, David Schizer (tax law). Jagdish Bhagwati is University Professor of Economics and Law.
For the year ending December 2009, Columbia Law School’s faculty ranked #2 in the nation for the number of academic papers authored and downloaded on the Social Science Research Network (SSRN), according to cumulative statistics, exceeded only by Harvard Law School's faculty.[18] In 2007 (the prior such ranking by SSRN) Columbia Law School's faculty also was the #2 most downloaded law faculty in the United States.[19][19]
Columbia was among the first schools to establish both comparative and international law centers. The Law School also has major centers for the study of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean law, as well as centers for European Legal Studies, Law and Economics, Corporate Governance, Law and Philosophy, eleven other law centers, and numerous law programs.[20]
In 2006, the Law School embarked on an ambitious campaign to increase the number of faculty by fifty percent without increasing the number of students.[21]
On May 26, 2009, President Barack Obama nominated Judge Sonia Sotomayor, a Lecturer-in-Law at Columbia since 1999, to be a Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.[22] Judge Sotomayor created and co-taught a course entitled "The Federal Appellate Externship" every semester at the Law School since the fall 2000.[23] Federal Appellate Externships and many other externships, including Federal District Externships, are offered each year at Columbia.[24][25]
Among other externships, the Law School offeres a full-semester externship on the federal government in Washington, D.C. that provides students hands-on experience in government law offices. In addition to their placements at federal agencies, students in the program also are required to attend a weekly seminar and write a substantive research paper.[26] The Federal Government Externship has the following three specific components:
1) Field Placements: Students are required to work a minimum of 30 hours a week doing substantive legal work at a federal agency. Options include several sections of the Department of Justice, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Federal Communications Commission, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Department of Homeland Security,
2) Seminar: Students conduct an in-depth analysis of the roles lawyers play in federal offices. Each seminar is taught by Columbia Law faculty and a Washington-based adjunct professor. Each seminar also features guest speakers and has a substantive writing component.
3) Supervised Research: Students are required to produce an 8,000–10,000-word research paper on a topic closely connected to their externship and field placement. Externs are encouraged to consult with the agency in which they work to develop their topic.
Columbia Law School’s Arthur W. Diamond Library is one of the most comprehensive libraries in the world and is the second largest law library in the United States, with over 1,000,000 volumes and subscriptions to more than 7,450 journals and other serials.[27][28]
The Columbia Law Review is the second most cited law journal in the world[29] and is one of the four publishers of the Bluebook. Columbia publishes thirteen other student-edited journals, including the Columbia Business Law Review, Columbia Human Rights Law Review, Columbia Journal of Asian Law, Columbia Journal of Environmental Law, Columbia Journal of European Law, Columbia Journal of Gender and Law, Columbia Journal of Law & Arts, Journal of Law & Social Problems, Columbia Journal of Race & Law, Columbia Journal of Tax Law, Columbia Journal of Transnational Law, Columbia Science and Technology Review, and the American Review of International Arbitration.[30]
In December 2010, the Law School announced the addition of an accelerated JD/MBA joint degree program, which allows students to obtain both a JD and MBA within three years.[31][32] The accelerated program will not replace the existing four year JD/MBA joint degree program. Interested students will be able to choose between the two programs.[33][34] A joint degree can prove to be beneficial to law students' career objectives. To enable interested students to achieve this goal, the Law School may approve a joint degree with any of the following of Columbia’s graduate or professional schools:[35]
Additionally, in recent years, students have successfully petitioned the Law School’s Rules Committee for permission to create a joint degree program with schools that have agreed to grant advanced standing toward their Master’s degree for work completed in the Columbia J.D. program:[35]
Columbia has cultivated alliances and dual degree programs with overseas law schools, including the University of Oxford, King's College London, University College London, and the London School of Economics in London, England; the Institut d'études politiques de Paris (“Sciences Po”) and the Université Panthéon-Sorbonne in Paris, France; the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands; and the Institute for Law and Finance (ILF) at Goethe University Frankfurt in Frankfurt, Germany.[36][37]
The Law School runs nine vigorous clinical programs that contribute to the community,[38] including the nation's first technology-based clinic, called Lawyering in the Digital Age. This clinic is currently engaged in building a community resource to understand the collateral consequences of criminal charges.[39] In April 2006, Columbia announced that it was starting the nation's first clinic in sexuality and gender law.[40] In 2007, Columbia opened a new program in law and technology.[41]
Given that Columbia is well known for its strength in corporate law, the Law School offers, for example, a "Deals" course that includes participants from the Columbia Business School and the Law School. In addition, the Columbia Business and Law Association (CBLA), the Law School's principal student group dedicated to the interaction between law and business, routinely sponsors lectures, workshops, and networking events from traditional areas of interest such as investment banking, management consulting, venture capital, private equity, hedge funds, and entrepreneurship. CBLA also serves as a center for members of the Columbia Law School community interested in many aspects of business law, including corporate governance and securities regulation.[42]
The student-run organization Unemployment Action Center has a chapter at Columbia Law School.
Columbia Law School’s main building, Jerome L. Greene Hall (or simply "the Law School"), was designed by Wallace Harrison and Max Abramovitz, architects of the United Nations Headquarters and Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts (which for many years served as the site of Columbia Law School's graduation ceremonies). It is located at the intersection of Amsterdam Avenue and West 116th Street. One of the building's defining features is its frontal sculpture, Bellerophon Taming Pegasus, designed by Jacques Lipchitz, symbolizing man's struggle over (his own) wild side/unreason.
In 1996, the Law School was extensively renovated, including the addition of a new entrance façade and three story skylit lobby, as well as the expansion of existing space to include an upper level students' commons, lounge areas, and a café. In the summer of 2008, construction of a new floor in Jerome Greene Hall was completed providing 38 new faculty offices. Other Columbia Law School buildings include William and June Warren Hall, the Jerome Greene Learning Annex (which Jerome Greene's representatives politely declined to have renamed after the building of Jerome Green Hall), and William C. Warren Hall (or "Little Warren").
Lenfest Hall, the Law School's premier residence, opened in August 2003. The hall was named for H. F. Lenfest '58 and his wife Marguerite. Lenfest contains more than 200 luxury student residences, including private studio apartments and one-bedroom apartments.[43] All Columbia Law students are guaranteed housing on campus for the duration of their Law School studies.
Columbia offers a Graduate Legal Studies Program, including the Master of Laws (LL.M.) and the Doctor of Juridical Science (S.J.D.) degrees. The LL.M. Program is considered one of the best in the United States and has been ranked very highly according to private studies.[44][45] Each year the Law School enrolls approximately 210 graduate students from more than 50 countries with experience in all areas of the legal profession, including academia, the judiciary, public service, civil rights and human rights advocacy, non-governmental organizations, international organizations, and private practice. Graduate students are an important component of the Law School community. They participate in many co-curricular activities, including student journals, moot courts, and student organizations. Graduate students also organize and speak at conferences, workshops, and colloquia on current legal issues.[46]
Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th President of the United States and the 25th Vice President of the United States, and Franklin D. Roosevelt, the 32nd President of the United States, are alumni of CLS. Current President of Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili, received his LL.M. at Columbia; Giuliano Amato, twice former Prime Minister of Italy (1992–93 and 2000–2001), was also a CLS graduate. Graduates of the law school have served as members of the United States President's Cabinet and non-U.S. government executive cabinets, including U.S. Secretary of State, Secretary of Treasury, Secretary of War (now U.S. Secretary of Defense), and Attorney General, amongst others.
Three of the school's graduates have served as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States: Charles Evans Hughes, Harlan Fiske Stone and John Jay. Nine alumni of Columbia Law School have served on the Supreme Court of the United States, including current member Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Several alumni have served as United States Solicitor General. There are over 90 current and past members of the U.S. federal courts who have graduated from CLS. Internationally, CLS graduates also have occupied prominent judicial positions, including Shi Jiuyong, former president of the International Court of Justice; Xue Hanqin, current member of the ICJ; Susan Denham current Chief Justice, Supreme Court of Ireland; Hironobu Takesaki, current Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Japan; Karin Maria Bruzelius, current member of the Supreme Court of Sweden; Lawrence Collins, current Justice of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom; and Francis M. Ssekandi, former justice of the Supreme Court of Uganda, among others.
Notable legal academics who are graduates of CLS include Barbara Black, Lee Bollinger, Felix S. Cohen, Lawrence Collins, Robert Cover, Samuel Estreicher, E. Allan Farnsworth, Charles Fried, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Harvey Goldschmid, Kent Greenawalt, Jack Greenberg, Geoffrey C. Hazard, Jr., Benjamin Kaplan, Jessica Litman, Louis Lusky, Yale Kamisar, Soia Mentschikoff, Richard B. Morris, Paula Franzese, Robert Pitofsky, Lawrence Sager, Michael I. Sovern, Arthur T. Vanderbilt, Charles Warren, Herbert Wechsler, and Mark D. West.
Columbia Law School alumni also have achieved remarkable success in business and elsewhere. For example, civil rights activist, recording artist, and actor Paul Robeson received his law degree from CLS in 1923. Academy Award-winning lyricist and playwright Oscar Hammerstein II attended the law school. Alumni of the Law School have been the president or founder of more than thirty colleges and universities in the nation. More current members of the Forbes 400 attended Columbia than any other law school.
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