The state’s only public law school earned national accreditation Tuesday, capping off its eight-year battle for respect and affirming efforts by the outgoing University of Massachusetts Dartmouth chancellor who fought hard to see the school established.
UMass Law will now have provisional accreditation from the American Bar Association, which will review it every year for the next three to ensure it continues to meet ABA standards. At the end of the three years, the school will be eligible for full accredited status.
“It’s like a glowing Good Housekeeping seal of approval that we know what we’re doing,” said Jean MacCormack, who will step down at the end of the month. “I feel like people said it couldn’t be done, like, ‘No, you can’t play in that arena.’ Of course we can. Our students don’t have to apologize.”
The new accreditation will allow future UMass Law graduates to take the bar exam in any state, rather than the two -- Massachusetts and Connecticut -- that are currently allowed. It will not apply retroactively to the 53 members of the school’s inaugural class, who graduated May 21, though they will be able to tell potential employers they are graduates of an accredited institution.
The school, which currently has 325 students, expects a bump in applications for next year. Its new dean, Mary Lu Bilek, appointed June 7, said accreditation would help the school attract mentors for students entering a tough legal job market.
“This means we can move more quickly so our students have not only the skills they need, but also role models and a realistic sense of what the viable models are for making a living in the law,” she said.
Accreditation will also help the school refine its public service mission, Bilek added.
“A public law school has a special obligation to graduate as lawyers students who are going to be public servants or who are civic-minded,” she said. “If you pay high tuition, you pretty much either have to get a big firm job or wonder how you’re going to crawl out of bankruptcy for the rest of your life. But when you’re in a school where tuition is half of what it is at other schools in the area, you can think about going into the district attorney’s office, or becoming a clerk for a judge, or doing legal aid and services.”
A public law school was first proposed in early 2004. When UMass began negotiations to found the school by acquiring a struggling private institution, the Southern New England School of Law, it faced skepticism from several sides. The private institution was itself unaccredited. Other law schools lobbied against the public school’s founding.
And some critics in state government said the move might siphon resources from the UMass system as a whole. In 2005, the Massachusetts Board of Higher Education voted against taking over the Southern New England School of Law’s assets, saying the plan was fiscally unsound, though the board later approved the merger in 2010.
Throughout the debate, MacCormack maintained that the new school -- far from sapping taxpayer dollars -- would eventually become a source of revenue from tuition dollars.
A UMass Dartmouth spokesman said last week that the school has already returned $1.3 million to the state.
Governor Deval Patrick hailed the school’s milestone Tuesday.
“Today is a great day for UMass, the SouthCoast region and for our Commonwealth as a whole,” he said. “The accreditation of UMass Law marks a milestone in our efforts to expand access to high-quality and affordable education.”
Mary Carmichael can be reached at mary.carmichael@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @mary_carmichael.Source: www.boston.com
Undoing health law could have messy ripple effects - The Guardian
RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR
Associated Press= WASHINGTON (AP) — It sounds like a silver lining. Even if the Supreme Court overturns President Barack Obama's health care law, employers can keep offering popular coverage for the young adult children of their workers.
But here's the catch: The parents' taxes would go up.
That's only one of the messy potential ripple effects when the Supreme Court delivers its verdict on the Affordable Care Act this month. The law affects most major components of the U.S. health care system in its effort to extend coverage to millions of uninsured people.
Because the legislation is so complicated, an orderly unwinding would prove difficult if it were overturned entirely or in part.
Better Medicare prescription benefits, currently saving hundreds of dollars for older people with high drug costs, would be suspended. Ditto for preventive care with no co-payments, now available to retirees and working families alike.
Partially overturning the law could leave hospitals, insurers and other service providers on the hook for tax increases and spending cuts without the law's promise of more paying customers to offset losses.
If the law is upheld, other kinds of complications could result.
The nation is so divided that states led by Republicans are largely unprepared to carry out critical requirements such as creating insurance markets. Things may not settle down.
"At the end of the day, I don't think any of the major players in the health insurance industry or the provider community really wants to see the whole thing overturned," said Christine Ferguson, a health policy expert who was commissioner of public health in Massachusetts when Mitt Romney was governor.
"Even though this is not the most ideal solution, at least it is moving us forward, and it does infuse some money into the system for coverage," said Ferguson, now at George Washington University. As the GOP presidential candidate, Romney has pledged to wipe Obama's law off the books. But he defends his Massachusetts law that served as a prototype for Obama's.
While it's unclear how the justices will rule, oral arguments did not go well for the Obama administration. The central issue is whether the government can require individuals to have health insurance and fine them if they don't.
That mandate takes effect in 2014, at the same time that the law would prohibit insurance companies from denying coverage to people with existing health problems. Most experts say the coverage guarantee would balloon costs unless virtually all people joined the insurance pool.
Opponents say Congress overstepped its constitutional authority by issuing the insurance mandate. The administration says the requirement is permissible because it serves to regulate interstate commerce. Most people already are insured. The law provides subsidies to help uninsured middle-class households pay premiums and expands Medicaid to pick up more low-income people.
The coverage for young adults up to age 26 on a parent's health insurance is a popular provision that no one's arguing about. A report last week from the Commonwealth Fund estimated that 6.6 million young adults have taken advantage of the benefit, while a new Gallup survey showed the uninsured rate for people age 18-25 continues to decline, down to 23 percent from 28 percent when the law took effect.
Families will be watching to see if their 20-somethings transitioning to the work world will get to keep that newfound security.
Because the benefit is a winner with consumers, experts say many employers and insurers would look for ways to keep offering it even if there's no legal requirement to do so. On Monday, UnitedHealth Group Inc., the nation's largest insurer, is announcing that it will continue to offer coverage to young adults even if the health care law is struck down.
But economist Paul Fronstin of the Employee Benefit Research Institute says many parents would pay higher taxes as a result because they would have to pay for the young adult's coverage with after-tax dollars. Under the health care law, that coverage now comes out of pre-tax dollars.
Fronstin says there's no way to tell exactly how much that tax increase might be, but a couple of hundred dollars a year or more is a reasonable ballpark estimate. Upper-income taxpayers would have a greater liability.
"Adult children aren't necessarily dependents for tax purposes, but an employer can allow anyone to be on a plan, just like they now allow domestic partners," said Fronstin. "If your employer said, 'I'm going to let you keep this,' it would become a taxable benefit for certain people."
Advocates for the elderly are also worried about untoward ripple effects.
If the entire law is overturned, seniors with high prescription costs in Medicare's "donut hole" coverage gap could lose annual discounts averaging about $600. AARP policy director David Certner says he would hope the discounts could remain in place at least through the end of this year.
Yet that might not be possible. Lacking legal authority, Medicare would have to take away the discounts. Drugmakers, now bearing the cost, could decide they want to keep offering discounts voluntarily. But then they'd risk running afoul of other federal rules that bar medical providers from offering financial inducements to Medicare recipients.
"I don't think anyone has any idea," said Certner.
A mixed verdict from the high court would be the most confusing outcome. Some parts of the law would be struck down while others lurch ahead.
That kind of result would seem to call for Congress to step in and smooth any necessary adjustments. Yet partisan divisions on Capitol Hill are so intense that hardly anyone sees a chance that would happen this year.
Source: www.guardian.co.uk
Children to get stronger rights in divorce - The Independent
The stringent new penalties will be introduced with changes to the law which will establish a legal right for both parents to have a meaningful relationship with their children after a marriage breakdown.
Ministers will today propose different ways to establish the notion of "shared parenting" after separation in law. Judges will be expected, where possible, to ensure that fathers are given time with their sons and daughters and mothers who defy court orders requiring them to give such access will face a range of penalties including the removal of passports or driving licences and the imposition of home curfews.
"The Government believes that there should be a level playing field on enforcement so that denial of maintenance or refusal to facilitate contact both give rise to the same or very similar penalties," the consultation document to be published today states.
Despite some grandparents reportedly being legally warned not to send birthday cards to grandchildren last week, laws will not be changed to ensure grandparents are granted access to grandchildren. Ministers will announce that mothers will in future be warned that they may lose custody of their children if they repeatedly defy court orders. "We want the law to be far more explicit about the importance of children having an ongoing relationship with both their parents after separation, where that is safe and in the child's best interests," said the Children's minister, Tim Loughton.
Campaigners say that without a legal right to see their children, fathers can be excluded. Over the past decade, Fathers 4 Justice has staged high-profile protests including climbing on to the roof of Buckingham Palace.
According to the Government, studies show that following a divorce, 90 per cent of children reside mainly with one of their parents – with just 12 per cent of these children living with their father. Under the four options proposed by the Government, family courts will have a legal duty to ensure that parents have a continuing relationship with their children if a marriage breaks down – because a "child's welfare is likely to be furthered".
Ministers point to a 2008 study which claimed children with "highly-involved dads develop better friendships, more empathy and higher levels of educational achievement and self-esteem".
According to the study children with involved fathers are less likely to become involved with crime or substance abuse. Earlier this year, ministers had rejected the advice from the economist David Norgrove, who chaired an independent official review into family justice, and warned of the situation in Australia after the country introduced "shared parenting" rights. There a series of legal claims and counter-claims led to severe delays in child custody cases.
"Amending the law will allow people to appeal. It's really not needed as judges already take into account these factors," said Matt Bryant, of Resolution, which represents 6,000 family lawyers.
Source: www.independent.co.uk
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