Last Thursday professors from Harvard Law School (HLS) presented their work on possible plans for the school’s expansion in Cambridge and Allston to the University administrators who will decide the school’s future location.

President Lawrence H. Summers, Provost Steven E. Hyman, Senior Adviser to the President Dennis F. Thompson and Harvard’s Associate Vice President for Planning and Real Estate Kathy A. Spiegelman gathered in Mass. Hall with the seven members of the Law School’s Locational Options Committee to hear their initial update on what connections tie HLS to its current campus and what factors may force it to change.

Professor of Law Elena Kagan, chair of the committee and a member of the University-wide Physical Planning Committee, presented the Law School committee’s research on the issues that have generated controversy among the school’s faculty for the past three years.

The committee—composed of six HLS faculty and HLS Dean of Administration Julie Englund—have examined the links between HLS and Harvard’s other schools to determine if they can’t afford to leave Cambridge and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) behind, or would benefit from joining a proposed new professional school campus in Allston.

After considering the long-term space needs of HLS, they have begun to consider the viability of spreading out from their Cambridge home, or picking up and moving across the river to Harvard’s vast new holdings in Allston.

Both sides said the meeting went well, but the future of the law school is far from settled. The HLS faculty has backed down from its past staunch opposition to an Allston move and is willing to consider plans, but its attitude remains very skeptical.

Kagan’s full report to the HLS faculty and Dean Robert C. Clark, due in June, will only present the information and options that will inform future decision-making.

“We’re nowhere near through with this exploration,” Kagan said. “It’s such a difficult question to ask where we’ll be 50 years from now.”

Expansion And Opposition

The committee has looked into options for creating space in the northwest corner of its current Cambridge campus by moving the Everett St. parking garage underground and by knocking down the North Hall dormitory on Mass. Ave.

In addition, the committee has been working with Harvard Planning and Real Estate to envision an HLS campus in Allston.

“We figure out what the University owns, who we would like our neighbors to be and what we would like the neighborhood to look like—site, acreage, density of buildings,” Kagan said.

The committee has been working with a University-hired consultant to conceive of the possibilities for the space.

The Allston options have figured as a major part of the committee’s plans, and created intense debate from the faculty, Kagan said.

At three workshops over the past four months, the committee has presented its work to the HLS faculty.