The federal government’s effort to strip the American Bar Association of its law-school accreditation role is emerging as one of the most consequential legal-industry regulatory fights of the year. While this is not a courtroom merits ruling, the stakes are unusually high: ABA recognition has long served as the backbone for law-school legitimacy, student loan access, and bar eligibility in many jurisdictions.

If the U.S. Department of Education succeeds, the result could be a more fragmented system in which states take a larger role in deciding which law schools qualify graduates for bar admission.

The Federal Trade Commission has inserted itself into a debate with potentially long-term consequences for the legal profession: who gets to decide whether a lawyer’s education is good enough for bar admission. In a recent endorsement of an Ohio Supreme Court proposal, the FTC supported reducing the American Bar Association’s outsized role in determining whether a law school credential qualifies an applicant to sit for the bar.

That is more than an academic governance issue.