Brian Leiter's Law School Reports

Hastings Dean Nell Newton to be New Dean at Notre Dame

Nell Newton, Dean of the University of California Hastings College of Law since 2006, will step down this summer and become Dean of the Notre Dame Law School.  Newton was previously Dean at the University of Connecticut School of Law before her move to Hastings.

UPDATE:  The Notre Dame news release is now up.  Notre Dame has been one of "the most improved" law schools in terms of faculty quality over the last decade or so, so hopefully Dean Newton will continue that positive trajectory.

Temple's Phoebe Haddon Named Dean at Maryland

The Maryland news release is here and Maryland professor Danielle Citron comments here.

Berkeley and John Yoo, Again

The propriety of action by Berkeley, about which we have written before, may become a more complicated question depending on how these developments play out.

Two More Senior Hires for UC Irvine: Chacon from UC Davis, Tomlins from the ABF

The new law school at the University of California at Irvine has made two more senior hires:  Jennifer Chacon (immigration law) from the University of California at Davis, and Christopher Tomlins, a leading legal historian, who is a Research Professor at the American Bar Foundation.

The Best Academic Publishers in Law?

Which academic presses are the "best" in legal scholarship, i.e., which publish the highest quality new legal scholarship?  A new poll here.  This obviously excludes publishers who mainly produce casebooks and textbooks.

UPDATE:  A reader points out that MIT Press probably should have been included; they don't publish a lot in law, but they do have some prominent authors, and while it seems unlikely that they would have outperformed the top five, it would have been good to have them in the mix.  So it goes with blog polls...

ASU's White Named Dean at Miami

Patricia White, the former and quite successful Dean of the law school at Arizona State University, has been appointed Dean at the University of Miami.  That's a very good catch for Miami!

Priest from Northwestern to Yale

Claire Priest (legal history) at Northwestern University has accepted a senior offer from Yale Law School.  She is the second senior appointment in legal history for Yale in the last year (the other being John Witt from Columbia).

(Priest is, for those who are wondering, also the daughter of Yale Law School faculty member George Priest.  This is an unusual, though not unprecedented, situation:  Eric Posner left a tenured post at Penn to join the Chicago faculty, where his father, Judge Richard Posner, remains a Senior Lecturer, and Benjamin Liebman is a professor at Columbia Law School, where his father, Lance Liebman, teaches and also served as Dean.  Feel free to post other examples of parent and child on the same law faculty in the comments section.)

The world's most alienating airport?

How could it be otherwise?

Obama to Nominate Yale Law Dean Harold Koh as Legal Adviser...

...to the U.S. State Department.  Longtime YLS faculty member Kate Stith will serve as Acting Dean.

Longtime William & Mary Faculty Member Davison Douglas Named Dean

News release here.