Welcome from Founding Dean Erwin Chemerinsky

October 3, 2007

I am tremendously honored and enormously excited to be the founding dean of the Donald Bren School of Law at the University of California, Irvine. The school will open to its first students in August 2009, but already we are beginning the process of recruiting outstanding faculty and administrators. I believe that we have the opportunity to create an outstanding school to meet the needs of Southern California and the nation.

This is the first new law school at a public university in California in almost half a century. A public university has a special role and mission in a state. It is significantly supported by the tax resources of the state and should serve the state. In part, this is done by educating the students of the state, many of whom will remain and be the region’s next generation of great lawyers, judges, and academics.

As a public university, teaching a commitment to public service will be a core aspect of the law school’s mission. This is not liberal or conservative; individuals of every political persuasion should feel a duty to use their talents and skills to make society better. My hope is that leadership training will be a part of the new law school’s mission and program.

The University of California, Irvine is an especially desirable place for a new law school. It already has some of the top faculty in the country in law related fields, such as law and humanities, law and society, criminology, law and psychology, law and economics, and other disciplines. Thus, part of what will make the new law school distinctive will be its use of these outstanding faculty members in creating a truly interdisciplinary law school.

My hope, too, is that the school will be an innovator in legal education. I would like to see every law student have a significant “experiential learning” component in law school and ideally in each year of law school. For example, the goal will be that every student must have a clinical experience, or something comparable to it, before graduating. I always have been astounded that medical students treat patients, often from early in their training, but many law students never see a client until they graduate.

The law school likely will emphasize areas that are particularly important in Orange County, such as intellectual property, law and technology, environmental law, law and medicine, and public interest law. My hope is to begin immediately to create fellowships for students in these areas.

The goal is to hire faculty as quickly as possible while maintaining the highest standards of scholarship and teaching, with a faculty of about 35 when the school is fully operational. Although it will start smaller, ultimately there will be 200 students in a class. It will be a faculty and student body that is diverse in every possible way, where all viewpoints are reflected and debated.

I do not underestimate how daunting the task will be to create a new institution. The existence of this school is the result of enormous hard work by many people at UCI and in Orange County over the last 15 years. Chancellor Michael Drake has been tireless in his efforts to make this dream a reality.

Please do not hesitate to contact me or others at UCI if we can provide any information about the new school or be of assistance in any way.

Sincerely,

Erwin Chemerinsky