Download a high-resolution photograph of Edward Rubin.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. ñ Edward Rubin of the University of Pennsylvania Law
School has been named John Wade-Kent Syverud Professor of Law and dean
of Vanderbilt University Law School effective July 1, Provost and Vice
Chancellor for Academic Affairs Nicholas Zeppos announced today.
“Vanderbilt is an excellent law school with a superb faculty,” said
Rubin. “I look forward to joining it and helping it move forward to
provide a uniquely relevant and exciting legal education for the 21st
century.”
“Ed Rubin is one of the most distinguished legal educators of his
generation,” Zeppos said. “He is an innovative and creative thinker, a
pre-eminent scholar and a widely respected teacher. I am confident that
his leadership at Vanderbilt will redefine legal education in the
future.
“Ed embodies the highest values of the Vanderbilt community ñ
excellence, civility, mutual respect and collegiality,” Zeppos added.
“He is a terrific listener and synthesizer of ideas with an enormous
respect for the importance of faculty engagement.”
One of his first goals, Rubin said, is to meet extensively with faculty
members from across the university, students, alumni and community
leaders to gain an understanding of their aspirations for the law
school.
Ilene Moore, who is married to Rubin, will have an appointment at the
Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Moore, the former director of
Student Health Services at Temple University, will conduct research and
develop programs in risk containment and alternatives to litigation.
“I am delighted to welcome Ed and Ilene to Vanderbilt and to
Nashville,” said Chancellor Gordon Gee. “As scholars, teachers and
citizens, they will enliven our intellectual community. Ed‘s commitment
to rigorous interdisciplinary scholarship is matched only by his
genuine passion for student success and satisfaction.”
Rubin, the Theodore K. Warner Jr. Professor of Law at Pennsylvania,
said he had no aspirations to be dean of a law school until he saw the
opportunity at Vanderbilt. “Not only does Vanderbilt have an extremely
innovative and forward-looking faculty, but the university‘s
administrators ñ the Chancellor and the provost ñ are also committed to
innovation. In my experience, this is absolutely unique in higher
education,” he explained. “What I know of legal education, Vanderbilt
is the only place I could imagine being dean.”
Michael A. Fitts, dean and Bernard G. Segal Professor of Law at
Pennsylvania, said, “Ed Rubin will be an exceptional dean. He is an
extraordinary legal scholar who has made fundamental contributions in a
number of wide-ranging fields, and he also has been a very thoughtful
commentator over the years on trends in legal scholarship and legal
education. We will sorely miss him at Penn not only for his intellect
and his wisdom, but his friendship. Vanderbilt is very lucky indeed to
have a leader as respected intellectually and personally as Ed Rubin.”
Rubin succeeds Kent Syverud, dean and Garner Anthony Professor of Law,
who announced in April that he would step down as dean at the end of
his second term in the summer of 2005. Syverud will remain a full-time
member of the Vanderbilt Law School faculty.
“Ed will build upon the outstanding work done by Kent Syverud over the
past eight years,” Zeppos said. “By every measure, Kent‘s leadership as
dean has strengthened the law school and brought to Vanderbilt a great
faculty, a distinctively talented and diverse student body and a
spectacular new home. He richly deserves our thanks and appreciation.”
A national search for Syverud‘s successor was conducted by a committee
headed by Centennial Professor of Law Jeffrey Schoenblum. “I ñ and the
rest of the committee ñ believe that this is an extraordinary
selection,” Schoenblum said. “Indisputably, Ed Rubin is a giant among
legal scholars. He is also an incredibly engaging and warm individual.
We are thrilled that we, with the crucial and unstinting assistance of
the Chancellor and the provost, were able to attract him to Vanderbilt.
I am confident that Ed will prove a remarkable leader who will achieve
exceptional things, building on the tremendous successes of our current
dean, Kent Syverud.”
Zeppos praised the search committee for its work. “This search process
was a true team effort with many contributions from the faculty,
students, staff and alumni. I am grateful to Jeffrey Schoenblum, whose
energy and good judgment made this appointment possible, and to the
many faculty members who engaged Ed in a serious and thoughtful
discussion about law, legal education and the future.”
Rubin said he was drawn to Vanderbilt by the dynamic scholarship,
teaching and research activity at the law school, including a new
program in law and business, a new international master of laws (LL.M.)
degree and significant partnerships with other academic units.
As a result of this strong foundation, he said, the law school is in a
position to move forward with a major reformulation of legal education
for the 21st century. “In the 19th century, legal scholarship and
education was self-contained. Now, in our complex modern world, it must
reach out to other disciplines, such as economics, sociology, political
science and organization theory. I want to connect the law school with
other programs on campus in exciting ways, which is possible because of
Vanderbilt‘s unique efforts in interdisciplinary education,” he said.
He added that the Nashville community is “a great resource because it‘s
a health care center, a state capital and a growing and thriving
business community. We also will reach out to our alumni and the
community, because the law school belongs not only to the university,
but to the entire city and the public.”
Rubin will be the first to hold the John Wade-Kent Syverud
Professorship, endowed by alumnus Garner Anthony Jr. to honor Wade, who
was dean from 1952 to 1971, and Syverud, dean since 1997.
Rubin joined the faculty at Pennsylvania in 1998 from the University of
California, Berkeley School of Law (Boalt Hall), where he had taught
since 1982 and was an associate dean for three years. Prior to that, he
was an associate with the law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton
& Garrison in New York, where he practiced entertainment law. He
holds a bachelor‘s degree in history and anthropology from Princeton
University. After earning his law degree from Yale University in 1979,
he clerked for Judge Jon O. Newman of the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of
Appeals.
At Pennsylvania, Rubin teaches administrative law, commercial law and
seminars on topics ranging from administrative policy to law and
technology, human rights and punishment theory.
He is the author of numerous articles, chapters and books, including
two volumes forthcoming this year, Beyond Camelot: Rethinking Politics
and Law for the Modern State and Federalism: A Theoretical Inquiry,
which he co-authored with Malcolm Feeley. With Feeley, he also
co-authored Judicial Policy Making and the Modern State: How the Courts
Reformed America‘s Prisons, and Rubin edited Minimizing Harm: A New
Crime Policy for Modern America.
Rubin has been a consultant to the Asia Foundation Project on the
Administrative Licensing Law for the People‘s Republic of China, the
Russian Privatization Center and to the United Nations Development
Programme.
He also has been active in university governance while at Pennsylvania
and previously at Berkeley. He served as secretary of the University of
Pennsylvania Senate and was a member of the University Council. He has
served as chair of the Association of American Law Schools‘ sections on
socio-economics and scholarship and on its curriculum and research,
professional development and nominations committees. At Berkeley,
he chaired the university-wide Privilege and Tenure Committee.
Media contact: Susanne Hicks, (615) 322-NEWS
susanne.hicks@vanderbilt.edu