Scholar Martha Minow Named Harvard Law Dean

Longtime law professor and noted scholar Martha Minow was named dean of the top-tier Harvard Law School today.

Starting July 1, Minow succeeds Elena Kagan, who left Harvard to become President Obama's solicitor general.

In making the announcement, Harvard President Drew Faust described Minow as "an intellectual leader, a devoted teacher and mentor, a collaborative colleague, and an exemplary institutional citizen across her nearly three decades of service on the Harvard Law School faculty."

Her interests have ranged from "international human rights to equality and inequality, from religion and pluralism to managing mass tort litigation, from family law and education law to the privatization of military, schooling, and other governmental activities," the announcement notes.

Minow responded that she's up for helping the law school and aspiring lawyers meeting the challenges ahead.

"In this time of both challenge and promise for this country and for the world, Harvard Law School faculty, students, staff, and graduates are already playing pivotal roles in the search for financial stability, national security, peaceful international relations, and legal order," she said. "I am eager to help the remarkable community of people at the Harvard Law School, in concert with colleagues across Harvard and beyond, continue to pursue the promise of the rule of law, the ideal of justice, the practical solution of problems, and ever-deeper understandings of legal institutions and commitments."

Minow, who once clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, has been a member of the Harvard faculty since 1981. She was a University of Michigan undergrad, earned her master's in education at Harvard and her law degree from Yale.

Hat tip: Legal Blog Watch