Antonin Scalia Law School


Antonin Scalia Law School is the law school of George Mason University, a state university in Virginia, United States. The law school sits in Arlington, roughly 15 miles east-northeast of the university's main campus in Fairfax.
U.S. News & World Report ranks the school 45th among American law schools, and it is the 3rd-highest-ranked law school in the Washington metropolitan area, behind Georgetown University Law Center and George Washington University Law School. In 2017, the school had 525 students in its J.D., LL.M., JD/MBA, and JD/MPP programs. The median LSAT score among incoming J.D. students in 2018 was 163 and the median GPA was 3.76. The passage rate for first-time takers of the Virginia bar exam in July 2017 was 80.33%, fifth among Virginia's eight law schools.

Rankings

George Mason University School of Law was authorized by the Virginia General Assembly in March 1979 and was founded on July 1, 1979. The school had started as the "International School of Law", which opened in 1972 in a classroom at the Federal Bar Building on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC. In 1973, it moved into the home of former United States Chief Justice Edward Douglass White on Rhode Island Avenue, and in 1975 purchased the old Kann's Department Store in Arlington. Despite growth, ISL could never obtain accreditation. In 1976, it discussed a merger with George Mason University, which was interested in setting up a law school. In 1978, the Virginia State Council of Education denied GMU's proposal to start a law school and encouraged a merger with ISL instead. Later that year, the Council advised against allowing that merger, but the Virginia state legislature nonetheless approved the merger in early March 1979.
The school became fully accredited by the American Bar Association in 1986, but was still not widely known during the late 1980s. Since then, however, its rankings have risen rapidly.
In 2016, the school was offered $30 million to rename itself for Antonin Scalia, the late United States Supreme Court justice. On March 31, its Board of Visitors approved the proposal, allowing the school to receive one gift of $10 million from the Charles Koch Foundation and another of $20 million from an anonymous donor. Soon after school officials announced that the new name would be "The Antonin Scalia School of Law", observers noted that this could be abbreviated "ASSLaw". Several days later, school officials announced that the new name would be Antonin Scalia Law School. On May 17, the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia gave final approval for the renaming.

Conservatism

The law school has a reputation for conservative teaching which increased with the renaming in 2016 for Scalia, who was a conservative. The Washington Post editorial board wrote that "university officials aren’t fooling anyone if they contend that naming the school after such a polarizing figure doesn’t give it an ideological brand." The law school received a gift of $50 million, the largest ever received by the university, from the estate of Allison and Dorothy Rouse to "fund a chair or chairs that will promote the conservative principles of governance, statesmanship, high morals, civil and religious freedom and the study of the United States Constitution". The university has in the past accepted donations from conservative donors in exchange for allowing the donors to have a say in hiring and firing for the Mercatus Center, the university's think tank, and to be notified of any change in the law school's leadership.
The Washington Post editorial board called the law school's students and faculty "fairly...libertarian- and conservative-leaning" David Bernstein, a professor at the law school, wrote that in his experience "the average George Mason law school student — unlike the average faculty member — leans a bit to the moderate left."

Tuition

The total cost of attendance for the 2017-18 academic year at Mason Law was $49,219 for in-state students attending full-time; the total cost of attendance for non-resident students attending full-time is $64,605. The Law School Transparency estimated debt-financed cost of attendance for three years is $179,567 for residents, and $234,586 for non-residents. To combat the high cost of law school, George Mason's Board of Visitors voted in 2013 to freeze tuition through the 2016-2017 academic year.

Curriculum

Mason Law is somewhat distinctive in offering a wide variety of intense law tracks, each of which requires that approximately one-third of the credits for graduation be completed in the track, and law concentrations, which are elective specializations and have a less restrictive credit requirement as compared to the track program. The law tracks include Litigation Law, Patent Law, and Regulatory Law.
The law concentrations include Antitrust Law, Communications Law, Corporate and Securities Law, Criminal Law, Homeland & National Security Law, Immigration Law, Intellectual Property Law, International Business Law, Legal and Economic Theory, Litigation Law, Personal Law, Regulatory Law, Tax Law, and Technology Law.
Also, the school has a Legal Research, Writing and Analysis curriculum. Mason Law requires its students to complete four semesters of LRWA coursework. Students acquire the necessary skills for trial and appellate practice. The first-year LRWA curriculum is taught by third-year law students under the guidance of full-time faculty. During the first semester, students learn how to conduct legal research and write a predictive memorandum, while during the second semester, students compete in intramural oral arguments while producing both predictive and persuasive memoranda. The second year of LRWA is taught by legal practitioners, and consists of Appellate Writing and Legal Drafting. Student transcripts bear a separate grade-point average for LRWA and writing-intensive coursework in addition to the overall GPA. Students must successfully complete 89 credits to graduate.

First-year curriculum

In addition to two semesters of LRWA, the first-year curriculum is filled with foundation courses. First-year day students cover the following legal foundation courses: Torts, Contracts, Property, Civil Procedure, Legislation and Statutory Interpretation, and Criminal Law. In addition, every student is required to complete one semester of "Economic Foundations of Legal Studies," a basic economics course taught by distinguished economists. First-year students may not take any electives.
The first-year students are graded according to a mandatory 3.25 curve.

Second-year curriculum

In their second year of study, day students must complete a 4-credit Constitutional Law course and complete an additional 4 credits of LRWA. Students may select from a variety of upper-level electives in addition to these requirements.

Employment

According to George Mason's official ABA-required disclosures, 56% of the Class of 2014 obtained full-time, long-term, JD-required employment nine months after graduation. Ten months after graduation, 84% of the Class of 2014 was employed in or about to begin full-time jobs requiring bar passage or jobs for which a J.D. provides an advantage. George Mason's Law School Transparency under-employment score is 16.8%, indicating the percentage of the Class of 2014 unemployed, pursuing an additional degree, or working in a non-professional, short-term, or part-time job nine months after graduation.

Law library

The George Mason Law Library has a collection of electronic and print materials providing access to legal treatises, journals, and databases. Non-legal materials are available through the GMU University Libraries. It is a selective depository for U.S. Government documents, and it provides interlibrary lending services with other academic libraries, which enables students and faculty to borrow materials from major academic libraries. The library occupies four levels of the law school building. It has 14 study rooms, 70 carrel seats, and 196 table seats wired with electrical and network connections, and a wireless network is available. The library also operates 2 computer labs with a variety of software. The library employs 16 full-time staff members, including 6 librarians with degrees in law and library science and 3 technology specialists. Access is limited to university faculty, students, staff, alumni and members of the bar.

Notable people

Alumni

Professors from the Antonin Scalia Law School advocate with the federal government to expand copyright and reduce what the government asks from private corporations in return for public funding. In particular, they opposed a federal open-access mandate in 2020.
Other Antonin Scalia Law School professors were criticised by lawmakers for their conflict of interest within the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau as they advocated for policies favorable to financial corporations which were also their paying clients.
The Antonin Scalia Law School partially overlapped at times with the George Mason Environmental Law Clinic or Free Market Environmental Law Clinic, which merged with the Energy & Environment Legal Institute , known for its climate science denialism and funded by the coal industry.
Antonin Scalia Law School leadership in one occasion «admonished the professors for engaging in "irresponsible advocacy"» which had the goal to receive corporate donations in return for attacks on climate science.

Journals

Student Edited