After the selection of Jack Weiss as the new law chancellor of the Paul M. Hebert Law Center questions arose over whether American Bar Association accreditation guidelines were followed correctly.
“The standard requires consultation with the faculty,” said Nancy Slonim, ABA deputy director for policy communications. “[Consultation] means to solicit the views of the faculty and provide input from the faculty into the process of selecting the dean.”
Slonim said the ABA guidelines for dean selection require the process to include the faculty’s input, not necessarily their support.
Weiss was not one of the two recommended candidates to come from a closed door law faculty meeting. Historically faculty meetings have been closed to the public to promote open discussion.
During the law chancellor search, System President William Jenkins formed the law center chancellor search committee. The committee was comprised of 15 people including six faculty members. The other members included outside judges, lawyers and one law student.
The committee’s goal was to help President Jenkins make a recommendation to the System Board of Supervisors for the final selection of a chancellor.
Problems may have arisen from a guideline in the ABA’s Rules of Procedure for Approval of Law Schools which stipulates faculty must have “substantial involvement” in the selection of a new dean.
The committee members were asked by President Jenkins to rank their top three choices of a pool of six remaining candidates. The faculty did not follow Jenkins’ instructions and only provided their first and second choices to candidates Eric Chiappinelli and Michael Krauss. The voting faculty members acted as representatives of the faculty’s decision to support Chiappinelli and Krauss as their only recommendations.
There was some support for Weiss in the faculty meeting.
Law center professor and search committee member Greg Smith said he thought Weiss was well received during a welcoming lunch with faculty.
Ultimately, Weiss received the most first rank votes from non-faculty members of the search committee. Jenkins then recommended him to the Board of Supervisors where he was unanimously approved for the top job.
Some faculty had reservations about Weiss because of his lack of experience in education in comparison to the other candidates. Prior to coming to the University, Weiss had served as an adjunct law professor at the law center, Tulane University and Columbia University.
Both Chiappinelli and Krauss are law professors. Chiappinelli also serves as associate dean for alumni and professional relations at Seattle University School of Law.c
In a memo sent by Jenkins to the Board of Supervisors members ,he said the position of law chancellor “is administratively broader and different from that of a dean of a law school.” Weiss is considered one of the nation’s foremost experts on the First Amendment. He graduated cum laude from Yale University and received his law degree magna cum laude from Harvard Law School. He has had a successful career as a practicing attorney in New York and Louisiana.
As an attorney, he has represented several large media outlets including The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.
“There is no doubt in my mind that he will take the Law center to another level of excellence,” said Hank Gowen, a member of the Board of Supervisors and former member of the search committee.
Gowen said he was so impressed by Weiss’ resume that he thought some one had slipped it in as a joke.
“He was the best person we could of hoped for,” he said.
———Contact Mark Macmurdo at [email protected]