The University of Michigan

by Wilfred Byron Shaw

the Regents shall so arrange the professorships as to appoint such a number only as the wants of the institution shall require; and to increase them from time to time, as the income from the fund shall warrant, and the public interests demand; Provided, always, That no new professorship shall be established without the consent of the Legislature.

The immediate government of the several departments was to rest with their respective Faculties, but;

the Regents shall have power to regulate the course of instruction, and prescribe, under the advice of the professorship, the books and authorities to be used—and also to confer such degrees and grant such diplomas as are usually conferred and granted in other universities.

The Regents were also to have the power of removing "any professor or tutor, or other officer connected with the institution, when in their judgment the interests of the University shall require it." This specification of the powers and duties of the Regents was repeated with some modifications in the Act of April 8, 1851, which followed the revision of the Constitution of 1850. The Constitution itself merely stated that the Regents "shall have the general supervision of the University and the direction and control of all expenditures from the University interest fund."

These are the general provisions upon which the relations between the Regents and the university body are based. In practice the Faculty has come to have a greater degree of autonomy in certain directions than might be suggested by a strict interpretation of these measures, while in most cases the "advice of the professorship" is sought and followed readily and sympathetically in so far as is warranted by the financial situation, as it appears to the Board.

The University Faculties are organized first by Departments, with one member as head; the Schools and Colleges are also organized under the separate Deans to carry on their own work, while the general organization of the whole Faculty rests in the University Senate, composed of all members of professorial rank, including Assistant Professors. In addition there is a smaller body, known as the Senate Council, composed of the Deans and one other representative of the different Schools and Colleges as well as the President, a secretary, and the chairman of the Committee on Student affairs. To this body are referred many questions of importance for immediate action or reference to the Regents.

The independent position of the Board of Regents as the governing body of the University has not gone unquestioned by the other divisions of the state government, and a series of decisions and judicial interpretations of the constitutional and legislative acts regarding the University have been necessary to establish the powers of the Regents as a separate branch of the state administration. Fortunately for the University these are now well recognized.

The first decision arose through the efforts of the Legislature to compel the Regents to establish a Professorship of Homeopathy in the University, and a mandamus action was brought in 1865 to compel the University to carry out the provisions of a clause to that effect, inserted in the Organic Act of the University in the years before. This was unsuccessful, though not on the ground that the act was unconstitutional but because one Elijah Drake, who brought the action, was not connected with the University and was not, therefore, privileged to sue for the writ. The question was brought up again in 1867, this time by the Regents, who sought to secure the payment of the $15,000 granted to the University upon condition that they establish a Professorship of Homeopathy, by authorizing a School of Homeopathy in Detroit. Again the Court failed to grant the request. Two years later the question came up once more in its first form, in an effort to compel the Regents to establish the proposed Department. The Regents argued;

If the Legislature could require the appointment of one professor, it could require the appointment of another, or any number of others. If it could say what professorships should exist, it could say what professorships should not exist, and who should fill professors' chairs; moreover, if it could regulate the internal affairs of the University in this regard, it could do so in others, and thus the supervision, direction and control which the Constitution vested in the Regents would be at an end.... Either the Legislature had no power of the kind, or it had unlimited power; either the Regents were the representatives of the people who elected them, or they were servants of the Legislature.[2]