Today’s Root Scholars, such as the Class of 2004 pictured, are now integrated into the substantial public interest community at the Law School. The Roots share living spaces and attend special lectures and events with other Law School students interested in public interest law.
The committee then offered several recommendations. It stated that Root applications should filter first through the Law School admissions process and then through several additional screenings, with attention to a student’s geographic location, academic achievements, and commitment to public service/public interest work. In another recommendation, the committee addressed recruitment based on the judicial circuits. While the Program’s reputation drew applicants from around the country, the committee continued to support the judicial circuit model to continue to ensure a broad geographic distribution in the Program. The committee also saw it as essential for the Program’s survival that it live within its financial means, and to that end, the
perspectives,” which could mean entering the private sector despite having enrolled with different intentions. Further, the committee was not convinced that working outside the private sector necessarily meant working for the public interest, saying: “Would an ardent environmentalist regard a lawyer for a construction union who argues for Westway or a lawyer for the Mountain States Legal Foundation who urges fewer restraints on strip mining as public interest lawyers?” The Dorsen Report did not attempt to simplify this extremely loaded issue, but to ease tensions it suggested that an explicit
“We have the widest range of public interest programming of any law school in America, and a central part of that is the visibility that the Root Program has received in the last 50 years.” P R O F E SS O R A N T H O N Y T H O M P S O N
committee recommended that scholarship amounts be reduced to two-thirds tuition; the change was implemented in 1984. While the committee addressed the question of whether students who went through the Program could, in good conscience, take jobs in the private sector, it was not able to entirely resolve it. In exploring the philosophical side of this issue, the Dorsen Committee asked: Is it morally justifiable, in the modern age, for recipients of a merit-based scholarship to accept high-paying jobs in the private sector? First, the committee acknowledged that “young people develop and alter their
payback system be instituted, so that a Root who made enough money was morally obligated to repay the scholarship as if it were a loan. This suggestion paved the way for the income-based loan repayment assistance programs that were developed later for non-Roots. In recent years, the debate over Root career choices has been addressed by an explicit moral obligation stating that Root graduates who earn a salary above the prevailing public interest salary should repay their scholarships. The question of what defines public service and public interest, however, remains open, and perhaps always will be. However,
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Because of funding for the Financial Aid Study, Root-Tilden Scholars who begin Law School between 1995 and 1998 increase in number from 10 to 22 per year
Root-Tilden alumnus Jerome Kern (’60) contributes $5 million to the Program’s endowment, doubling the existing endowment, and the Program is renamed the Root-Tilden-Kern Scholarship Program
1995
1998
T H E L AW S C H O O L
the Root-Tilden-Kern Program, as the pioneer in public service scholarship programs, has worked through its growing pains and matured, allowing it to remain relevant and respected today. “We have the widest range of public interest programming of any law school in America, and a central part of that is the visibility that the Root Program has received in the last 50 years,” Professor Thompson says. Because NYU School of Law is so well known for its extraordinary program in public interest law, the Root Scholars have now become completely integrated into the extensive public interest community at the Law School. The activities sponsored by the Program, like the Monday Night Speaker Series, are open to all Law School students. Additionally, Thompson points out that tuition funding is available for the general population of students who enter public sector positions. “What we are able to do with Roots on the front end, we are able to do for other public interest students on the back end, with loan repayment,” he says.
Continuing the Success Currently, the Law School is involved in a financial campaign initiated by Jerome Kern (’60), whose name was added to the Program’s title in 1999. Kern, along with NYU Board of Trustees Chair and former Law School Board Chair Martin Lipton
Jerome Kern, yesterday (1960) and today.
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