While Congress debates "the public option" as a component of health care reform, Massachusetts is about to have a public option debate of its own. Only in this case, the debate is over whether the state should open a public law school as part of the University of Massachusetts.
Massachusetts is one of just six states without a public law school. That would change under the plan UMass officials announced yesterday. It calls for the UMass-Dartmouth campus to take over the private, unaccredited Southern New England School of Law in North Dartmouth. The law school's board of trustees voted earlier this week to donate to UMass its campus and assets, valued at $22.6 million.
The law school's dean, Robert V. Ward Jr., told the Boston Business Journal that the resulting school would take on the UMass name and the current school would cease to exist. Although details would have to be worked out, Ward assumed the law school's existing employees, including himself, would move over to UMass.
Still, in a state that already has nine law schools... [MORE]
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