Caminker recommended as dean of the Law School

Updated 1:00 PM June 24, 2003

Caminker recommended as dean of the Law School

By Nancy Connell
News Service

Evan Caminker will be recommended to the Board of Regents for appointment as dean of the Law School. President Mary Sue Coleman and Provost Paul N. Courant made the announcement June 20. If approved by the regents, his appointment will be effective Aug. 1.

Photo courtesy U-M Law School

Caminker joined the Law School faculty in 1999 and was appointed associate dean for academic affairs in 2001. He is a scholar of American constitutional law whose writings, teaching and professional activities focus on individual rights, federalism and the nature of judicial decision-making.

“Professor Caminker has provided outstanding contributions to the University and the legal profession through his extensive research and his experience in the private and public sectors,” Coleman says. “I am delighted that we have found a new dean with such a broad background in the practice of law and the academic study of law.”

Courant says, "Evan Caminker is a superb legal scholar with valuable administrative experience. I worked closely with him in the University's defense of the Grutter v. Bollinger lawsuit. He has a broad vision of the role of the Law School in the University, and I have every confidence he will be an excellent dean."

Caminker came to Michigan from the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law, where he served on the faculty from 1991-99.

The new dean brings a broad array of legal experience from his practice in the academic, governmental, public interest and private sectors. From May 2000-January 2001, he served as deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel, U.S. Department of Justice, while on leave from the U-M Law School. He clerked for Justice William Brennan Jr. of the U.S. Supreme Court and Judge William Norris of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. He practiced law at the Center for Law in the Public Interest in Los Angeles and with Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering in Washington, D.C.

He has published articles in the Michigan Law Review, Yale Law Journal, Columbia Law Review, Stanford Law Review and the Supreme Court Review. His most recent work includes an inquiry into the nature of decision-making on multi-member courts. Caminker, who has taught in the fields of constitutional law, civil procedure and federal courts, has received the ACLU Distinguished Professors Award for Civil Liberties Education.

“I am honored to have been selected as the new dean of this great Law School, and I look forward to working with students, faculty and the administration to build upon the many strengths of this institution,” Caminker says.

Caminker received his B.A. in political economy and environmental studies, summa cum laude, from the University of California, Los Angeles, and his J.D. from the Yale Law School, where he was a senior editor of the Yale Law Journal and a Coker Fellow, and was awarded the Benjamin Scharps Prize for Excellence in Legal Writing.

“I would like to take this opportunity to express my appreciation to Kyle D. Logue, who chaired the Search Advisory Committee, and to the members of the committee for their outstanding service,” Courant says. “The president and I are delighted that Evan Caminker has accepted the deanship. We are confident that he will be a passionate advocate for the Law School and contributor to the University. His experience at the national level will be of enormous value to the school as it expands its research profile and continues its impressive educational and interdisciplinary activities.”

Caminker recommended as dean of the Law School

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