University of Chicago Law names new dean

This just in: Michael Schill, dean of the UCLA School of Law, will become the new head of the University of Chicago Law School.

The school, one of the nation’s most highly regarded law schools, announced the appointment Tuesday. Schill, who will start Jan. 1, replaces Saul Levmore, who has been the dean since 2001.

Levmore announced earlier this year his intention of stepping down to return to full-time scholarship.

Schill, a scholar in property law, spent five years at UCLA, according to a University of Chicago news release.

Former UI law school assistant dean charged with stealing from Chicago agency

Authorities say a former assistant business dean at the University of Illinois College of Law had been charged with stealing $20,000 from a Chicago city agency.

Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez says 38-year-old Ming Liu of Urbana, also known as Ming Liu Bengtsson, was indicted for theft, official misconduct and forgery.

Liu is accused of stealing $20,000 intended to promote tourism while working as a project administrator with the city of Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs from 1997 through June 2006.

New Dean for UM Law School
Environmental and energy law expert is first woman to hold dean’s job at the University of Montana School of Law.
By Amy Linn

Legal scholar and educator Irma Russell, a specialist in environmental and energy law, is the new dean at the University of Montana School of Law—the first female to hold that position. Russell replaces outgoing law school dean E. Edwin Eck, head of the law school since 1995, who announced last fall that he would step down at the end of the academic year and return to the law school faculty, according to UM’s announcement.

Philly.com reports, so read on, read-oners.

Ex-dean helped police, report says
By Kathleen Brady Shea

Police investigating a prostitution ring in Chester County relied on two customers, including the dean of Villanova Law School, to provide information that culminated last week in a no-contest plea by the man promoting the business, documents show.

Mark A. Sargent, who was appointed dean in 1987, resigned suddenly Monday, citing personal and medical reasons.

According to a report by the Pennsylvania State Police, Sargent was a customer at a Kennett Township house suspected as a site for prostitution when police raided it Nov. 25. He was not charged.

The Rev. Peter Donohue, the Villanova University president, was out of town yesterday and unavailable for comment, said Jonathan Gust, university spokesman.

Gust said that the university had accepted Sargent’s resignation and that he would not be returning to the faculty. He declined comment on Sargent’s involvement in the prostitution bust.

…

The November raid came after a six-week surveillance of the house on Round Hill Road. The dwelling’s owner, Stephen A. Clark, was arrested Nov. 26 and pleaded no contest to charges of promoting prostitution and conspiracy. He was sentenced to 5 to 23 months in jail.

In an interview at the jail Wednesday, Clark, 62, of Kennett Township, said he believed a “celebrity perp,” as he called Sargent, got a free pass and influenced the outcome of his case.

“That’s absolutely not true,” said Chester County District Attorney Joseph W. Carroll.

Robert Post LAW ’77 named Law School dean
By Paul Needham and Vivian Yee

University President Richard Levin announced Monday the appointment of Robert Post LAW ’77 as the 16th dean of Yale Law School.

Post, a scholar of constitutional law, including the First Amendment, equal protection and legal history, will take office July 1. He succeeds Harold Hongju Koh, whose nomination for the position of legal adviser to the Department of State is under consideration by the Senate.

“Dean Post is a very fine scholar and leader in constitutional law, and in an area that is attracting a lot of attention right now,” Levin said in an interview Monday. “His colleagues respect him as a wise and thoughtful member of the faculty who has a really very serious commitment to maintaining the academic excellence of the Law School.”

Post, 61, joined the Law School faculty in 2003 after teaching for 20 years at the School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley.

Alongside Law School professors Jack Balkin and Reva Siegel ’78 GRD ’82 LAW ’86, Post has recently led a legal movement known as “democratic constitutionalism,” which holds that courts should push for liberal social justice goals similar to those of the 1960s-era Supreme Court led by Chief Justice Earl Warren, but using moderate means rather than bold judicial activism.

DePaul removes law school dean

Glen Weissenberger has been dismissed as the dean of the DePaul University College of Law, short of two years into his second term.

University spokeswoman Denise Mattson said Weissenberger, who remains on the faculty as a law professor, was removed Thursday at the recommendation of the provost, Helmut Epp.

Epp sent a note to the law school’s faculty and staff Thursday saying, “The working relationship between the dean and the administration had deteriorated to the point where it had become difficult to accomplish the college’s work,” Mattson said.

Weissenberger could not be reached for comment Friday.

But in an e-mail he sent to law faculty members Friday morning that was obtained by the Tribune, Weissenberger said he “was not terminated for any wrong doing of any kind.” Rather, his “termination was based specifically” on a letter he sent Tuesday to the American Bar Association in advance of a meeting of its accreditation committee next week.

In that letter, which also was obtained by the Tribune, Weissenberger told the committee that a revenue-sharing agreement between the university and the law school “frequently has been disregarded by the University.”