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An Open Letter to AALS Executive Director Carl Monk

AALS executive director Carl Monk’s email address is publicly available on the AALS website, as are those of other AALS officers. Using those addresses, I’ve sent Monk and other top AALS officers the following letter by email:

As you know, the the Legal Writing Institute, the AALS Section on Legal Writing Research and Reasoning, and the AALS Section on Teaching are calling for a boycott of one of the hotels chosen for the 2009 annual meeting.

What you may not realize is that their request is the subject of widespread and, in many cases, highly critical debate in the law school blog community. Along with many other blog commentators, I believe that the AALS cannot legitimately support this boycott. We are a scholarly association that is supposed to be diverse in viewpoint and respectful of free speech. If the AALS leadership caves to the boycott threat, however, it will have punished the owner of the hotel for having exercised his constitutional free speech rights, while at the same time telling those of us in the AALS who disagree with the position taken by AALS Section on Legal Writing Research and Reasoning, and the AALS Section on Teaching that our views are, at best, unimportant and, at worst, illegitimate.

As blogger Tom Smith asks, if the AALS is going to boycott the hotel on such flimsy grounds, why not just kick those law professors who disagree with same sex marriage out of the AALS? “That would certainly make a statement about gay marriage, and would actually be within the jurisdiction, so to speak, of the AALS, which is all about law professors, not hoteliers.”

The question is not trivial. Blogger Greg Sisk asks: “Does this now mean that a member of the Legal Writing Institute or these AALS sections who is opposed to same-sex marriage is no longer a member in good standing? Does this mean that a member of these entities who dissents from the new official position in favor of same-sex marriage would be well-advised to remain silent or even resign?” I think those are fair questions that have already been posed by the unilateral actions of the Sections in question. For the AALS as a whole to validate the actions of the activists who control those sections raises the question of the status of those of us who dissent from the prevailing left-liberal ethos of most American law schools.

Other important questions have been posed by blogger Larry Ribstein:

• What if Mr. Manchester didn’t contribute money to oppose same sex marriage cause, but supported it vocally? Of course contributions are a form of expression. Would or should these groups make a distinction between contributions and other expression of belief?
• How would the boycotters feel about teaching students who opposed same sex marriage? (I note that the chair of one of the boycotting groups heads the legal writing program at a Catholic law school).
• If you were a student, would you feel comfortable expressing an anti-same-sex marriage view if you knew that the teacher couldn’t stand to stay at a hotel owned by somebody who opposed same sex marriage?

I urge the AALS leadership to carefully consider those questions before deciding whether to support the boycott.

In closing, it is especially critical that the AALS acknowledge that there is no issue of discrimination here. There is no evidence that the hotel in question discriminates against gays. Instead, this is viewpoint discrimination on the part of a handful of activists who are seeking to hijack the AALS for purposes of holding a boycott intended to punish someone with whose views on a contested issue of public policy they differ. If the AALS caves to the critics, it will have allowed a vocal contingent to hijack a purportedly diverse organization for the ends of a particular point of view that may not be shared by all members of the organization. One can only imagine how the sponsors of the boycott would react if I and other like-minded faculty insisted that the AALS boycott a hotel chain that supported abortion by, say, donating money to NARAL.

Stephen M. Bainbridge
William D Warren Professor
UCLA School of Law

For additional coverage of the AALS annual meeting boycott fight, see:

• Privileging One Point of View: The AALS Annual Meeting Kerfuffle
• What’s Behind the AALS Boycott?
• Hijacking Scholarly Organizations to Advance Left-Liberal Agendas