IRVINE : Faculty Senate Votes for UCI Law School

UC Irvine’s faculty senate Thursday voted overwhelmingly for creation of a law school on the growing campus.

The Academic Senate voted 32 to 2 for establishing such a graduate school, envisioned as serving about 400 to 600 students.

But Chancellor Jack W. Peltason cautioned that he would not forward the faculty’s recommendation to UC President David P. Gardner, pending the results of a systemwide task force study on the need for a fifth UC law school.

“We should not try to make it a race with the other (UC) campuses that might want a law school,” Peltason told the Academic Senate. “We should not try to stir up political activity with the (state) Legislature.”

The UC system has law schools at the Berkeley, Davis and Los Angeles campuses, as well as a fourth, Hastings Law School in San Francisco.

Orange County, which has 2.3 million residents and an estimated 8,000 lawyers, has added a state court of appeals and a federal court branch in the last decade. And many of the state’s prominent law firms have opened offices in the county.

The proposal to add a law school at UCI faces a good many hurdles. It would need the approval of Gardner, the UC Board of Regents, the state Postsecondary Education Commission, as well as funding from the state Legislature.

Peltason said he would forward the Academic Senate’s recommendation after the law school task force has completed its study, which is expected to be sometime in the fall.