American Inns of Court
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| Formation | 1985 |
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| Type | Legal Society |
| Headquarters | Alexandria, Virginia |
| Location |
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President
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Hon. Carl E. Stewart |
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Key people
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Malinda E. Dunn (Executive Director) |
| Website | www |
American Inns of Court (AIC) are designed to improve the skills, professionalism and ethics of the bench and bar. An American Inn of Court is an amalgam of judges, lawyers, and in some cases, law professors and law students. Each Inn meets approximately once a month both to "break bread" and to hold programs and discussions on matters of ethics, skills, and professionalism.
Beginning in the late 1970s, Chief Justice of the United States Warren Burger led a movement to create organizations in the United States inspired by and loosely modeled after the traditional English Inns of Court. At the suggestion of Rex Lee, a pilot program was entrusted to Senior United States District Court Judge A. Sherman Christensen, who honed the idea into a feasible concept. The first American Inn of Court was founded in 1980 in the Provo/Salt Lake City area of Utah, and included law students from Brigham Young University. Within the next three years, additional American Inns formed in Utah, Mississippi, Hawaii, New York and Washington, D.C.
In 1983, Chief Justice Burger created a committee of the Judicial Conference of the United States to explore whether the American Inn concept was of value to the administration of justice and, if so, whether there should be a national organization to promote, establish and assist American Inns, and promote the goals of legal excellence, civility, professionalism and ethics on a national level. The committee reported to the Judicial Conference affirmatively on the two questions and proposed the creation of the American Inns of Court Foundation. The Judicial Conference approved the reports and, thus, endorsed the American Inn concept and the formation of a national structure.
In 1985, the American Inns of Court Foundation was formally organized to promote and charter local Inns of Court across the United States.
The American Inns of Court actively involve more than 25,000 attorneys, legal scholars, judges (state, federal, and administrative), and law students. Membership is composed of the following categories:
There are over 350 chartered American Inns of Court, each of which is locally organized and administered. The American Inns of Court provides a search tool for locating Inns by state or zip code, as well as by name or ID number.
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