Dear AALS Leadership Section Members:
It is an urgent and defining moment to be researching, writing, and teaching in the areas of law and leadership. As legal educators situated at the intersection of education, ethics, and power, our scholarly and pedagogical commitments carry heightened democratic significance. The value of our work—whether focused on government institutions, private enterprise, or individual rights and responsibilities—extends well beyond the classroom and into the preservation of constitutional norms. In a climate marked by authoritarian pressures and institutional strain, leadership scholarship is not abstract; it is a practical resource for institutional courage, professional responsibility, and mission integrity. I explore these ideas in greater depth in my forthcoming article, Obeying in Advance Will Not Save You: How Adaptive Leadership Can Help Legal Education Stay Mission Driven in Times of Authoritarianism and Fear, 74 Journal of Legal Education (forthcoming 2026), which examines how adaptive leadership can help legal education uphold institutional mission, democratic values, and the rule of law during periods of authoritarian pressure and institutional uncertainty.
The AALS Section on Leadership exists to support and advance your work on leading in and through law. Our section’s presence on the AALS website includes resources that may be valuable to your teaching and scholarship, including leadership course syllabi, recordings of past webinars, announcements of upcoming programs, and prior editions of this newsletter. We encourage you to connect with members of the Executive Committee, share ideas for future programming, and let us know what additional resources would be most helpful to support your work.
Although it now seems far in the past, our January 2026 Annual Meeting program, Impact, Excellence, Resilience, and Professional Integrity: Educating Lawyers as Leaders, sparked an engaging and thoughtful conversation. I had the privilege of moderating a distinguished panel featuring Austen Parrish, William Bay, Judge Cory Wilson, and Judge James Graves. The audience discussion was equally impressive, reflecting the growing interest in leadership education across legal academia. We hope to continue those conversations through future webinars and newsletter contributions, and we encourage members to suggest topics or volunteer to participate.
The Section also proudly co-sponsored, with the AALS Section on Balance & Well-Being in Legal Education, the program Doing Well-Being Without Losing Your Mind: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Law Student, Faculty, and Staff Well-Being. The collaboration reflected our shared commitment to preparing lawyers who can lead effectively while sustaining themselves and the institutions they serve.
Our Executive Committee continues to grow with outstanding leadership. We are pleased to welcome Dean Joshua Fershée, Dean and Professor Emeritus Daisy Hurst Floyd, and Dean Gregory Bowman to the Executive Committee. We also extend our deepest gratitude to our Immediate Past Chair, Professor Joan Heminway, Rick Rose Distinguished Professor of Law, whose generosity, vision, and steadfast leadership have helped shape both this Section and the broader field of lawyer leadership education.
Leading—and leading change—is what we do as lawyers, legal educators, and scholars. Our students are the future stewards of the profession, and our classrooms are among the first places where they learn what responsible leadership requires. At a time of rapid institutional change and democratic uncertainty, our work in teaching, scholarship, and service has never been more important. We hope you will continue to view the Section as a community of colleagues and a resource as we navigate these evolving challenges together.
As one example of the resources available to support this work, the Holloran Center Rule of Law Initiative has developed a comprehensive set of digital Rule of Law Materials to help law schools intentionally integrate rule-of-law concepts into professional identity formation and legal education. The Initiative is a project of the Rule of Law Working Group, a joint effort of the Holloran Center for Ethical Leadership in the Professions and the “Pluralizing” Legal Professional Identity: Democracy, Equity, Justice, and the Law School Curriculum project, led by Eduardo Capulong and supported by a grant from the Mellon Foundation.
The materials include an introduction to the rule of law and its foundational principles, supplemental definitions, a model learning outcome, and a milestone rubric to support curriculum development and student assessment. These free resources are available at Rule of Law Materials. In addition, classroom-ready teaching materials developed through the Initiative’s October 2025 workshop will soon be available at no cost through West Academic’s faculty site and digital bookshelf, providing practical resources for incorporating rule-of-law instruction across a wide range of law school courses.
We encourage you to explore these materials and consider how the leadership concepts and the rule of law can be more intentionally woven into your own teaching, curriculum, and professional identity initiatives.
Warmly,
Tania Luma
Clinical Professor
Assistant Dean, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
Loyola Chicago School of Law