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College of Law

The University of Iowa College of Law, founded in 1865, is the oldest law school in continuous operation west of the Mississippi River. More than 650 students and a full-time faculty of around 50 are engaged at the college in a cooperative study of law, legal institutions, professional ethics, the role of law in public policy matters, and the intersection of law and other disciplines.

The college's student/faculty ratio of 14.3-to-1 is one of the best in American legal education. Three members of the law faculty hold Ph.D. degrees in law-related disciplines.

Through traditional Socratic classes, research seminars, closely supervised writing exercises, ambitious professional skills training programs, and clinical experiences, the college seeks to produce public-spirited leaders who will be rigorous thinkers, trusted advisors, forceful advocates, creative policy makers, and innovative scholars.

The college conducts its programs in the Boyd Law Building, a 200,000-square-foot facility that opened in 1986. Its spacious library, three courtrooms, clinic suite, building-wide audiovisual system, and extensive computer technologies are recognized as outstanding features in an educational facility specially designed for modern legal training.

The college is home to one of the nation's premier law libraries. The Law Library has the largest collection of legal volumes and volume equivalents among all public law schools. Its staff numbers 33 full-time-equivalent library professionals and other personnel, and it provides comfortable seating for more than 700 patrons, with 441 private study carrels, each equipped with its own data port. The library boasts a fully computerized information retrieval system. The online electronic card catalog provides instant information about all cataloged materials. The library also is on the University's wireless network.

The college celebrates diversity. Its faculty includes seven full-time professors from minority backgrounds, including African American, Asian American, and Hispanic American. In 1967 the college undertook one of the nation's first and most aggressive affirmative action programs aimed at attracting a more racially and ethnically diverse student body. Its success in this continuing effort has resulted in a minority student population that makes up approximately 17 percent of the law college's current student body (the state of Iowa's minority population is around 5 percent).

The college offers a challenging curriculum that is carefully balanced between substantive courses, perspective offerings, examination of ethical values and professionalism, and skills-training programs, including a highly active in-house legal clinic. Iowa's writing program--one of the strongest among law schools nationwide--is an integral part of all students' academic experience. During both semesters of their first year, students take one small-section class taught by a full-time professor.

The college also requires four additional writing units at the upper level, a requirement that must be fulfilled with at least two credits of faculty-supervised written work. The remaining two may be satisfied through a range of options, including writing for one of the school's four law journals, participating in the clinical program, completing exercises in appellate advocacy, or enrolling in specific seminars or independent writing projects.

The Writing Resource Center supports and builds upon classroom writing instruction and assists students with a broad range of writing tasks (see "Resources"/"Writing Resource Center" later in this section). The center and the writing program as a whole exemplify the personalized attention and dedication to individual learning for which the college is renowned in legal circles.

The college is proud of its four student-run scholarly journals. The Iowa Law Review has served as a scholarly legal journal since 1915, analyzing developments in the law and recommending new paths for the law to follow. It frequently is ranked among the top 20 legal periodicals in the country, based on the frequency with which it is cited.

The Journal of Corporation Law is the nation's oldest and top-rated student-run legal periodical specializing in corporate law. It provides the legal and academic communities with high-quality articles on corporate issues and business law.

Transnational Law & Contemporary Problems addresses legal issues confronting the global community. Since it began publication in 1991, it has earned an excellent reputation based on its symposiums on issues such as world food policy and global environmental regulation.

The Journal of Gender, Race & Justice hosts a symposium at the college each year, attracting nationally renowned legal scholars and practitioners who discuss topics such as criminal justice, education, and critical race feminism. The journal publishes the papers presented at the symposium.

In keeping with its educational mission of encouraging the acquisition of broad social awareness and technical professional competence, the University of Iowa College of Law offers a strong program of study in the rapidly expanding fields of international and comparative law. It does so for three reasons: in an era of global interdependence, an effective lawyer must understand international law and foreign legal systems; as professionals and community leaders, lawyers familiar with international and comparative law are crucial to the formulation of public policy at all levels of society; and the study of international and comparative law provides an essential theoretical foundation for all lawyers by affording unique insight into the nature of law and legal process.

All College of Law students benefit from international exposure through association with students in the college's Master of Laws program in international and comparative law. LL.M. students take most of their classes with J.D. students. In addition, each year foreign-trained law professors and jurists pursue research in the Law Library; they also may audit or speak in classes.

The journal Transnational Law & Contemporary Problems offers students a law review experience dedicated to international issues, and the college fields a team every year in the Philip C. Jessup International Moot Court Competition. Students also have opportunities to get involved with two faculty-run centers, the University of Iowa Center for Human Rights and the University of Iowa Center for International Finance and Development, as well as student groups such as the International Law Society and the Iowa Campaign for Human Rights.

Over the years, the college has enjoyed great success in preparing women and men to be professional and civic leaders. In the 20th century, Iowa graduates served as U.S. senators and representatives, state governors, and presidents of the American Bar Association, of major universities, and of the country's largest corporations. Iowa also has been a leader in preparing American law teachers. The college is resolved to continue its traditional role of training future lawyers for positions of professional and community leadership in the 21st century.