FAIRFAX, Va. (Legal Newsline) – The Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University in Virginia has received a $50 million grant, the largest in the school's history.
As stated in a press release made public on March 7, the grant was "a bequest from the estate of the late Judge Allison M. Rouse and Mrs. Dorothy B. Rouse," purposed to serve for academic use at the school.
George Mason University Communications Director Kathleen Corcoran told Legal Newsline that the use of the funds "was stipulated that Scalia Law use the distribution as an endowment to fund" 13 new academic chairs at the cost of $4 million each.
The press release states Dorothy Rouse was "an enthusiastic fan" of Scalia. Corcoran also praised the legacy of Scalia to legal education and to the school.
"A gifted jurist, scholar and teacher, Justice Scalia possessed masterful analytical, debate and legal writing skills. He proactively engaged people with disparate views to test his own positions. Justice Scalia serves as the model for the competencies with which we hope to equip our law students," Corcoran said.
Judge Rouse, per the release, "served four years in the Army in World War II before entering law school at the University of San Francisco where he met Dorothy Barker, whom he married in 1952. They lived in Redwood City, California and were associated with the San Mateo County District Attorney’s office for over a decade."
Rouse was appointed by then-governor Ronald Reagan in 1971 as an associate justice for the California Court of Appeal in San Francisco. He then served as a private judge and arbitrator until passing away in 2006 at the age of 86. His wife, who also had a law degree, died in 2018 at the age of 93.
The law school, as of the release, "has 44 full-time faculty and a total enrollment of 525 students," and it has been in the top tier of the U.S. News and World Report rankings for over 18 years.