Dan Rodriguez--who left Boalt to become Dean of the University of San Diego School of Law in 1999--will resign at the end of this academic year. There can be little doubt that Rodriguez's tenure transformed San Diego, making it a genuine national contender in the market for faculty talent and establishing the school, along with George Mason on the East Coast, as one of the "up-and-coming American law schools" of the new century.
I began my own teaching career at San Diego in 1993, moving to Texas in 1995. There were already many very good faculty in place back then (including Larry Alexander, whose loyalty to the school since 1970 has been crucial to its recent successes), but the school was somewhat paralyzed in appointments matters by ideological and personal disputes. Rodriguez successfully overcame that, making a string of notable lateral appointments from traditionally stronger schools: Karen Burke (tax) and Donald Dripps (criminal procedure) from Minnesota; Steven Smith (constitutional law) from Notre Dame (who turned down an offer from Northwestern in the process); Heidi Hurd and Michael Moore (law and philosophy, criminal law) from Penn (they subsequently moved to Illinois, where Hurd is now Dean); and Yale Kamisar (criminal procedure) from Michigan (Kamisar retired from Michigan), among others. In addition, he solidified ties with some of the excellent faculties at UC San Diego, adding leading philosophers, economists, and political scientists from UCSD to part-time posts at the Law School, as well as enjoying good success at retaining top faculty talent against raids by other schools (e.g., Frank Partnoy turned down Emory and Tom Smith turned down Ohio State during Rodriguez's tenure).
That San Diego came out 22nd in the nation in the faculty quality survey conducted in 2003 is hardly surprising, in light of these striking recruitments.
One "nut" that remains to be cracked for San Diego is how to get the corrupt U.S. News rankings to better reflect the school's accomplishments and merits. Mark Grady, another successful Dean (at George Mason University), cracked that nut for GMU, with the result that a school with at least a top 40 faculty is now ranked in the top 40 by U.S. News (even though its academic reputation scores still lag preposterously). San Diego, as a much larger school, has found it harder to mark progress in U.S. News (and its academic reputation scores are, like GMU's, also much too low). But that will be a task for the next Dean, who will inherit some great opportunities thanks to Dean Rodriguez's skillful leadership.
TONGUE-IN-CHEEK UPDATE: As a reader pointed out, I should add that Dean Rodriguez achieved all this despite the public revelation that San Diego has a small but vocal contingent of everyone's favorite right-wing kooks on the faculty!
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