Teare v. Committee On Admissions, 87-1037.

• Decision Date: 03 November 1989
• Docket Number: No. 87-1392.,No. 88-116.,No. 87-1037.,No. 89-50.,87-1037.,87-1392.,88-116.,89-50.
• Citation: 566 A.2d 23
• Parties: Peter Anthony Douglas TEARE, Noel C. Reilly, Abdul Mushin Nour Al-Athari, Martine Francine Coiquaud-Guerra, Petitioners, v. COMMITTEE ON ADMISSIONS, Respondent.
• Court: D.C. Court of Appeals

Page 23

566 A.2d 23

Peter Anthony Douglas TEARE, Noel C. Reilly, Abdul Mushin Nour Al-Athari, Martine Francine Coiquaud-Guerra, Petitioners, v. COMMITTEE ON ADMISSIONS, Respondent.

No. 87-1037.

No. 87-1392.

No. 88-116.

No. 89-50.

District of Columbia Court of Appeals.

Argued September 18, 1989.

Decided November 3, 1989.

Peter Anthony Douglas Teare, pro se.

Robert M. Clark, Washington, D.C., for petitioner Reilly.

Adrian L. Steel, Jr., Washington, D.C., for petitioner Al-Athari.

Peter J. Kadzik, Washington, D.C., for petitioner Coiquaud-Guerra.

Jerome Nelson for respondent. Lloyd N. Moore, Jr., Washington, D.C., filed a brief for respondent.

Before NEWMAN, STEADMAN and FARRELL, Associate Judges.

STEADMAN, Associate Judge:

Petitioners here are four resident alien attorneys, primarily educated in foreign law schools, who have been admitted to the bar of an American state within the past five years¹ and now seek admission without examination to the bar of the District of Columbia. All four petitioners passed the bar examination of the other jurisdiction with a Multistate Bar Examination ("MBE") score of at least 133. Thus, they have met one of the requirements of our Rule 46(c)(3)(ii) providing for admission without examination of recent admittees to the bars of other American jurisdictions.² However, each petitioner is faced with the obstacle presented by the additional requirement of the rule that the applicant have "been awarded Juris Doctor degree or its equivalent by a law school which, at the time of awarding the degree, was approved by the American Bar Association."

Although not all of the petitioners are identically situated, they present various constitutional grounds that they assert compel their admission.³ Alternatively, they ask this court to consider the facts of their individual cases and waive the requirement of graduation from an ABA approved school. Two of the petitioners, Al-Athari and Coiquaud-Guerra, claim that in any event they meet that requirement as set forth in the provisions of the Rule.

I.

Petitioners Al-Athari and Coiquaud-Guerra contend that they have satisfied the requirements of Rule 46(c)(3)(ii) and that the Committee on Admissions of the District of Columbia Bar (the "Committee")⁴ interpreted the rule erroneously in denying their applications for admission. The argument turns in part on the rules governing the conditions under which applicants are eligible to sit for the D.C. bar examination and seek admission in that manner. Under our Rule 46(b), petitioners note, candidates are eligible to take the D.C. bar examination either if they earn a J.D. from an ABA approved law school or if they complete twenty-four semester hours at an ABA approved law school (after earning a law degree at a school which is not ABA approved).⁵ In petitioners' view, this demonstrates that the Rules themselves recognize the equivalence of these two different educational approaches. As such, they argue that completion of twenty-four semester hours at an ABA approved law school, combined with graduation from a law school not approved by the ABA, is the "equivalent" of a Juris Doctor degree for purposes of admission without examination under Rule 46(c)(3)(ii). Since both Al-Athari and Coiquaud-Guerra have completed at least twenty-four credit hours at ABA approved schools,⁶ they claim to have satisfied the requirement of Rule 46(c)(3)(ii)(A) that they have "been awarded a Juris Doctor degree or its equivalent by a law school which, at the time of awarding the degree, was approved by the American Bar Association." Additionally, petitioner Al-Athari argues that since he relied on this reasonable interpretation in opting to take the Pennsylvania, and not the District of Columbia, bar examination, the claimed ambiguity in the term "equivalent" in Rule 46(c) should be resolved in his favor.⁷

We find these arguments unpersuasive. The fact that petitioners Al-Athari and Coiquaud-Guerra⁸ may possess the educational training required of graduates of non-ABA approved law schools to be permitted to take the D.C. bar examination under Rule 46(b)(4) does not mean they have a degree which is equivalent to a J.D. from an ABA approved law school for purposes of admission without examination under Rule 46(c).⁹ Although the two different educational paths governed by Rule 46(b) both satisfy D.C. bar examination eligibility requirements, this does not mean that the two are equal ways to gain the educational qualifications required for admission without examination to the D.C. Bar. The fact that candidates who have not graduated from ABA approved law schools must be subjected to the rigors of the District of Columbia bar examination, graded according to our standards, provides an added safeguard that they are so qualified.¹⁰ That is why a legal education which is equivalent for purposes of admission by examination is not equivalent for purposes of admission without examination.

We also reject petitioner Al-Athari's claim that he relied on a reasonable interpretation of the rules when, thinking he could waive into the D.C. Bar, he decided to take the Pennsylvania bar examination. We do not view Rule 46(c)(3)(ii)(A) as ambiguous in this regard. Moreover, Al-Athari made no inquiries to the Committee about the interpretation of Rule 46(c) before choosing to take the Pennsylvania exam.¹¹

Petitioner Coiquaud-Guerra also argues that her acceptance into Southern Methodist University's LL.M. program demonstrates that she already has at least the equivalent of a J.D. degree. She attaches to her petition an extract from the Southern Methodist University catalogue, which states that as a prerequisite to admission to its International and Comparative Law LL.M. program, an applicant must "be a graduate of a foreign law school of standing comparable to those approved by the Section of Legal Education of the American Bar Association." She thus claims she possesses an ABA approved law degree equivalent to, if not more advanced than, a J.D.

This argument is also unpersuasive. The fact that a foreign law school is of comparable standing to an ABA approved school does not establish that it meets the educational requirements imposed by the ABA for accreditation, or that its students receive training in areas they must master to practice law competently in this jurisdiction. Acceptance into and completion of an LL.M. program alone cannot establish that a candidate has been awarded by an ABA approved law school a degree which is the equivalent of a J.D. awarded by an ABA approved school.¹²

II.

We are also presented with several constitutional arguments, all of which we reject.

1. Full Faith and Credit. Petitioners first note that the highest courts of the jurisdictions which admitted them have effectively determined that their education is equivalent or substantially equivalent to that provided by an ABA approved law school for the purpose of admission to the bar.¹³ Those determinations, they contend, must be followed in this jurisdiction under the full faith and credit clause of article IV of the U.S. Constitution. Petitioners misread the effect of that clause.

First, the "substantial equivalence" of petitioners' education is not a relevant question in interpreting our Rule 46(c), which focuses on the equivalence of degrees, not of legal educations. Even if this court were bound by the determination of the courts of Colorado, New York, and Pennsylvania that petitioners' legal education was substantially equivalent to that offered at an ABA approved law school, our rules do not permit admission to the bar on the basis of an education "substantially equivalent" to that received at an ABA approved law school. In other words, the petitioners have brought us answers by courts of other jurisdictions to a question which the rules governing admission to practice of law in the District of Columbia do not ask.

Second, we are not bound by determinations of courts of other jurisdictions in this instance. The full faith and credit clause does not apply where, as here, there is no risk of conflict with or insult to another state. In Magnolia Petroleum Cc. v. Hunt, 320 U.S. 430, 64 S.Ct. 208, 88 L.Ed. 149 (1943), the Court explained that although the Constitution requires state courts to give full faith and credit to the judgments of other courts, this is not true for matters of local and statutory law.

In the case of local law, since each of the states of the Union has constitutional authority to make its own law with respect to persons and events within its borders, the full faith and credit clause does not ordinarily require it to substitute for its own law the conflicting law of another state, even though that law is of controlling force in the courts of that state with respect to the same persons and events.

Id. at 436-37, 64 S.Ct. at 212 (citations omitted). More recently, the Court reiterated that the "Full Faith and Credit Clause does not compel `a state to substitute the statutes of other states for its own statutes dealing with a subject matter concerning which it is competent to legislate.' " Sun Oil Co. v. Wortman, 486 U.S. 717, 108 S.Ct. 2117, 2122, 100 L.Ed.2d 743 (1988) (citation omitted). Since the system of rules a state court adopts to govern admission to the bar is matter of local policy, and not a judgment on the merits in a case or controversy, the District of Columbia need not extend full faith and credit to assessments made by the courts of other states of petitioners' legal training. See In re Application of Hansen, 275 N.W.2d 790, 798 (Minn. 1978), appeal dismissed, 441 U.S. 938, 99 S.Ct. 2154, 60 L.Ed.2d 1040 (1979) (refusing to defer to other state's assessment of a bar applicant's educational qualifications); Application of Schatz, 80 Wash.2d 604, 611, 497 P.2d 153, 157 (1972) (en banc) (noting that regulation of qualifications for admission to the bar is "peculiarly a domestic affair" not subject to full...