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2000 Newsl. 1 (2000)

handle is hein.aals/aalsnews2000 and id is 1 raw text is: February 2000 Number 2000-1 The President's Message President's Address: Striving for Equal Justice: The AALS in Its Second Century (Editor's Note: The following is the Presidential Address of Elliott S. Milstein before the House of Representatives at the 2000 Annual Meeting in Janu- ary.) I want to thank my predecessor, Greg Williams, for the truly excellent work he did as President and to complain as well about what a tough act he is to follow. He and I have become very close friends during our time together on the Executive Committee. I have learned a great deal from him, and he laughs at my jokes. Greg's life story, familiar to so many of us who read his power- ful autobiography, Life on the Color Line, the story of a boy whose childhood defined deprivation and trauma, poverty and rascism, and whose adolescence required struggle and courage beyond measure, is a story that enobles all of us. I say this because it is through the work we have the privilege to do, to teach and to open the doorway to the legal profession, to social mobility, that Greg became a lawyer, a distinguished law professor, the dean of The Ohio State Law School and the president of the Association of American Law Schools. And because of his leadership and his example, the AALS has a new project, a Diversity Task Force, strengthening our enduring commitment to our mission of ensuring that all of the groups within our society are represented in the bar, and searching for new ways of protecting that mission from the assaults that are being leveled against it. I am, of course, ecstatic to be before you as the millennial, centennial president, and very happy that the AALS is kicking off its second century with a clinical teacher at the helm. Indeed, because in many ways the AALS was founded to promote the idea that lawyers should be prepared in law schools rather than through apprenticeships, it is ironic that 100 years later we would have sufficiently legitimized experiential learning that someone whose career has been in that field could be where I am. In 1968, I was a 2d year student at University of Con- necticut law school and was the chair of the student legal aid organization. It was, of AALS President Elliott course, the year that Milstein addresses the House of Martin Luther King was Representatives at the 2000 assassinated and there AnnualMeeting were riots in Hartford and across the country and many people were arrested. In the midst of it all, Joe Harbaugh, then the chief public defender of the state and ever since my mentor, my teacher, my friend, gave a speech to the students and alumni of our organization- including judges and practicing lawyers-in which he passionately and persuasively claimed that it was our individual and collective duty to ensure that the criminal justice system operated fairly through this crisis. Mass (Continued on page 2) Printing and Distribution Courtesy of West Group and Foundation Press

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