Plight @ Institutions of Higher Learning

[AKA2D '91]

FAMU LAW SCHOOL GETS OFF THE GROUND

While the university is under a financial cloud, the new Florida A&M School of
Law is moving forward. Ground has been broken in Orlando for the new campus of
the law school. The law school was originally founded in 1951 on the Tallahassee
campus of FAMU. At that time blacks were prohibited from admission to
state-operated law schools in the state. To meet the requirements of the Equal
Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution, the state paid for black students
who wanted to go to law schools in other states.
But in the late 1940s, when a black man named Virgil Hawkins applied to the
all-white law school at the University of Florida, the state legislature
immediately established a law school at FAMU to comply with the separate but
equal doctrine of the U.S. Supreme Court. After the Brown decision and the
integration of Florida's all-white law schools, the state legislature decided to
merge the FAMU law school in Tallahassee with the nearby law school at Florida
State University.

When race-sensitive admissions at Florida's public universities were banned by
Governor Jeb Bush's One Florida plan, the legislature reestablished the FAMU law
school. The legislature believed that blacks might be shut out in the
competition for slots at the predominantly white institutions and thought that
the revival of the law school at FAMU would offer more opportunities for blacks
seeking a legal education. Remarkably, whites now make up the largest ethnic
group of students at the law school, which has been operating for the past two
years in an old office building.

Downtown Orlando, rather than Tallahassee, was chosen for the site of the new
law school campus. The new 160,000-square-foot facility is adjacent to the
federal courthouse. It was designed by FAMU graduates and the lead contracting
firm is also headed by a FAMU graduate.

The new $31 million building is expected to open in the fall of 2005.