Association of American Law Schools
The Association of American Law Schools (AALS) is a non-profit organization of 166 law schools in the United States. Another 23 schools are "non-member fee paid" schools, which pay AALS dues but choose not to become members. Its purpose is to improve the legal profession through the improvement of legal education. It also represents the interests of law schools towards the U.S. federal government and other national associations of institutes of higher education. It was formed in 1900.
The AALS requires its members to follow a nondiscrimination policy regarding "race, color, religion, national origin, sex, age, disability, or sexual orientation," and for member law schools to require this of any employer to which it gives access for recruitment. Some schools with particularly strong religious objections to homosexuality choose not to become AALS members for this reason.
The "don't ask, don't tell" policy was seen by the AALS and its members as impermissible discrimination. However, the AALS has excused its members from blocking access to the military since the passage of the Solomon Amendments, which denied federal funding to the parent university of a law school as well as the school itself if military recruiters are not given full campus access. The AALS has engaged in litigation challenging the Solomon Amendments as violative of the First Amendment. In an ironic note, The Judge Advocate General's School of the United States Army is a fee-paying nonmember of AALS.
The Association holds an annual conference, rotating its location among several large U.S. cities, among them San Francisco, New Orleans and Washington, D.C. Its January 2006 conference was originally scheduled to be held in New Orleans, but in the intervening months the devastation of Hurricane Katrina forced AALS to relocate the conference to Washington, D.C.