ITHACA, N.Y. -- Charles D. Cramton, assistant dean for graduate legal studies at Cornell University Law School since 2000, was recently appointed to a special committee taking a comprehensive look at the current New York state bar examination. The committee is charged with determining the bar exam's effectiveness in measuring professional competence and the exam's effect on law school curricula and on diversity in the judiciary and the bar. 

The more than 71,000-member New York State Bar Association (NYSBA) is the official statewide organization of lawyers in New York and the largest voluntary state bar association in the nation. The special committee was formed by the past chair of the NYSBA, partially in response to the New York State Board of Law Examiners' increasing the minimum passing score on the bar exam beginning this summer, which the NYSBA opposes.

Cramton is responsible for the school's LL.M. program, which enrolls 60 to 65 foreign lawyers a year, and the J.S.D. program. Before his current position at the Law School, he was assistant dean for alumni and international affairs. He has been the Law School's principal contact with the American Bar Association on matters of accreditation for the school's international programs, and he has had responsibility for administering joint degree programs with foreign law schools and coordinating visiting scholars, visiting foreign faculty and the Law School's Summer Institute in Paris, which is jointly sponsored with the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. 

Cramton also is the past chair of the American Association of Law Schools' Section on Graduate Programs for Foreign Lawyers and is currently a member of its executive committee. In addition, he was recently reappointed chair of the NYSBA's Committee on Legal Education and Admission to the Bar -- a longstanding committee he has served on since 1998.