UCI dean ready to move on

Now that Erwin Chemerinsky has put the whirlwind of controversy surrounding his hiring, firing and then rehiring behind him, the reputable legal scholar said he plans to ensure UCI law students gain the practical experience they need.

“I think that we can do a better job of training lawyers than law schools traditionally have,” Chemerinsky said Tuesday.

Until the past week, Chemerinsky probably wasn’t a household name in Orange County. That changed when UCI Chancellor Michael Drake rescinded a job offer to the Duke University law professor only days after he accepted it. Drake announced on Monday he had changed his mind and rehired Chemerinsky.

Chemerinsky, 54, has been married to Catherine Kirk, also a Duke law professor, for 14 years. One of his sons, Jeff, is a law student there. He has 21-year-old son at Loyola Marymount University and a 13-year-old son and 9-year-old daughter.

Raised on Chicago’s south side, Chemerinsky was the first in his family to attend college. The civil rights movement inspired his interest in law. He graduated from Northwestern University and received his law degree from Harvard Law School.

He represented Valerie Plame in her lawsuit against the Bush administration after the former CIA operative was outed after her husband wrote an op-ed piece disputing the Bush administration’s assertion that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. He has also represented Florida voters challenging election results in the 2000 presidential race and a Guantanamo Bay detainee.

And if that wasn’t enough to alarm some Orange County conservatives, he was also recently involved in a U.S. Supreme Court challenge to a Texas Ten Commandment monument.

But Chemerinsky sought to assuage conservative concerns that he might push a liberal agenda.

“I believe that any excellent law school will have a wide diversity of faculty for the university,” Chemerinsky said, adding that some recruited professors will be conservative.

He plans to also bring in faculty specializing in different aspects of law.

Two UCI faculty members currently signed up to work in the law school are social ecology professor Elizabeth Loftus and planning, policy and design professor Joe DiMento.

Chemerinsky expects to have six to eight faculty members by the end of 2008 and three to six more before fall 2009 classes begin.

The University of California board of regents convenes Thursday to vote on approving Chemerinsky’s $350,000 salary offer.

Chemerinsky had previously turned down offers to head law schools at UC Davis in 1990 and the University of North Carolina last year.

“I really want to do things that really make a difference,” Chemerinsky said. “Being the founding dean of a law school gives me the chance to make a difference. I only hope I can live up to expectations.”

Chemerinsky regards the last week as one of the hardest and strangest of his life.

“I wish last week had never happened, but there were positives,” he said. “The Donald Bren School of Law is going to be the best-known new law school in history.”

The UCI law school will be the first public law school to open in California in 40 years.