CWRU School of Law Hires New Dean

Case just announced that it has picked Lawrence Mitchell to be its new law school dean.  This is obviously a great hire, and I look forward to the already impressive business law program at Case only getting better as a result.  Case certainly qualifies as a nearby neighbor of Akron, and I actually live closer to Case than Akron (my wife, Dr. Maria Pagano, is on the faculty of Case's Department of Child Psychiatry)--so this post should be read as a shameless plug to receive more personal invitations to all future business law events at the law school.

Since I did not comment on the controversy surrounding Case's dean search earlier, I'd also like to say that I would have considered Bradley Smith to be a great hire as well--despite the fact that we clearly see a number of things differently.  I don't believe, however, that this controversy ever rose to the level of that surrounding the hiring, de facto firing, and subsequent re-hiring of Erwin Chemerinsky at UC Irvine.  Had the situations been more similar, I would have fully expected the academy to have been just as critical of Case as it was of UCI--regardless of ideology.  Having said that, I suspect that Brad will soon land a deanship somewhere (if that is what he wants) and he should be an asset in that position wherever he ends up.

Finally, I want to note that we do screen comments here at the BLPB.  So, you should fully expect me to delete all comments related to how beneficial it must be for my wife, in terms of dealing with me, to be a part of Case's Department of Child Psychiatry.  We all know it's true, so there's no point in making a fuss about it.

SJP