The CSU Cleveland-Marshall Law School Name Committee will host this Zoom webinar forum.
In the summer of 2020, we learned about a petition urging CSU Cleveland-Marshall and UIC John Marshall Law School to remove any reference to Chief Justice John Marshall in our law schools’ names because of Chief Justice Marshall’s association with slavery. Dean Fisher immediately formed a Law School Name Committee consisting of faculty, staff, students, and alumni to seek wide input, develop findings and options, and make a recommendation to our faculty for consideration about whether “Marshall,” named after Chief Justice John Marshall, should be removed from our Law School’s name, and if so, a recommendation about the new name of our Law School. Ultimately, a name change will be a university decision.
Dean Fisher has publicly noted that we must take the petition to change the name of our law school and the spirit in which it was written very seriously. Our law school rejects and condemns racism in all its forms - overt, covert, and systemic, and we accept our responsibility to evaluate our role in perpetuating racism, whether it is conscious or unconscious.
The Committee has decided to host some forums this semester to provide context to the issue of whether “Marshall” should be removed from our law school name. The March 22 forum is focused on how institutions such as ours should approach important decisions like the one before us and how we should face, understand, confront, and reckon with our nation's history and its legacy.
These forums are not intended to directly deal with the question of whether we should change our name or to advocate for any particular viewpoint. Rather, the purpose is to better understand how historians view institutional name changes and how other institutions have approached similar issues. The forums will intentionally present differing views and opinions on this subject.
Removing “Marshall” from our law school’s name would be a very consequential decision by the College of Law and Cleveland State University that requires careful study and thoughtful consideration of different viewpoints from our entire law school and university community. The legacy of Chief Justice John Marshall is complex and we are drawing on scholarly expertise to explore and examine that legacy as a part of our process.
We are an historic institution and are very proud of our iconic history. The Cleveland-Marshall College of Law is the direct descendant of two law schools, the Cleveland Law School founded in 1897, and the John Marshall School of Law, founded in 1916. In 1946, the two law schools merged to become Cleveland-Marshall Law School. In 1969, the law school joined Cleveland State University and was renamed the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law at Cleveland State University. We consistently have been the law school for many women and men who have broken gender, race, ethnic, economic, and generational barriers to make change and advance progress in social justice, civil rights, and public service.
In considering a name change, we will incorporate wide input and will be guided by our proud history, our guiding values, our law school’s mission Learn Law. Live Justice, and the values and mission of Cleveland State University.
Forum Panelists :
Professor Garrett Epps
Professor Garrett Epps is Legal Affairs Editor of The Washington Monthly. He is Professor Emeritus at the University of Baltimore School of Law. He has also taught Constitutional Law at American University, Boston College, Duke, and the University of Oregon. His books include Democracy Reborn: The Fourteenth Amendment and the Fight for Civil Rights in Post-Civil War America and American Epic: Reading the US Constitution.
Professor Jacqueline Jones
Professor Jacqueline Jones is President of the American Historical Association and the Ellen C. Temple Professor of Women’s History and Mastin Gentry White Professor of Southern History at the University of Texas at Austin, where she teaches courses in American history. Before coming to UT, she taught at Wellesley College, Brown University, and Brandeis University. She is president of the American Historical Association. She was a MacArthur Fellow from 1999 to 2004. Jones is the author of several books, including A Dreadful Deceit: The Myth of Race from the Colonial Era to Obama’s America.
Professor Ashley N. Woodson
Professor Ashley N. Woodson is the Assistant Director of the National Center of Institutional Diversity at the University of Michigan. Prior to this appointment, she served in the Center for Urban Education at the University of Pittsburgh, and the Carter Center for K-12 Black History Education at the University of Missouri. She is co-editor of the volume, The Future Is Black: Afropessimism, Fugitivity and Radical Hope in Education with Carl A. Grant and Michael Dumas.