March 22, 2007

Per the Sacramento Bee:

The California Postsecondary Education Commission voted 8-3 Tuesday against construction of a $70 million law school at the University of California, Irvine.

The vote apparently deals a severe blow to plans for the proposed 92,000-square-foot facility to accommodate 600 law students.

...In rejecting the Irvine project, the commission concluded that existing schools supply more than enough lawyers to meet market demand, [commission director Murray Haberman] said.

California currently has 51,151 more attorneys than needed to accommodate market demand, and the excess will rise to 57,422 by 2014, the commission report said.

Earlier: here and here. And veteran Sacramento Bee political columnist Dan Walters dismisses the scheme (via Lifson) as "institutional aggrandizement" born of "arrogance" and an "obvious roll of the pork barrel".