FROM THE DEAN’S DESK
W
ROGER A. FAIRFAX JR. Dean and Professor of Law
What another extraordinary year! As the cover story chronicles, the AUWCL community is still buzzing from the historic commencement address Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson delivered in May. In what was her very first commencement address delivered as a Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, Justice Jackson inspired our newly minted graduates and the entire AUWCL community with her message of perseverance and hope. Justice Jackson also took the time to engage with staff and faculty during her visit to the American University campus. We were honored that Justice Jackson would make AUWCL her first commencement address, and we will take her charge to heart as we continue to Champion What Matters.
Justice Jackson’s address was a fitting coda to an outstanding year, during which we made tremendous progress on every aspect of our strategic plan. In scholarship and teaching, we hired three wonderful new tenure-track professors: Gustavo Ribeiro (civil procedure and evidence), Chaz Brooks (clinic), and Charles Duan (intellectual property). They add to the amazing hires we made last year—Angi Porter, Thomas Williams, Maya Manian, and Jamie Abrams—and further expand our scholarly and pedagogical excellence. We also launched new programs and initiatives, including the Sport and Society Initiative and the ESG Initiative, both of which enhance our programmatic reach. We also celebrated two significant programmatic milestones, with our world-renowned International Legal Studies Program’s
40th anniversary, and the 50th anniversary of our path-breaking Clinical Program.
On the reputation and impact front, we had another banner year. Despite the chaos and instability of the US News & World Report rankings, our core metrics continue to improve significantly. Our latest entering class had the strongest combined admissions metrics (LSAT and undergraduate GPA) in the history of the law school. Our school’s reputation among our peers remains in the top 50 and is in the top 55 among lawyers and judges. Our bar passage and job placement numbers continue to reflect significant improvement over where they were several years ago, and our students continue to land prestigious and impactful positions in public interest organizations, large and small private law firms, government agencies, and federal and state clerkships. In addition, the excellence of our specialty programs continues to be recognized by our peers, with several programs receiving A or A+ ratings from PreLaw magazine, and nine of our programs ranked by US News in the top 50, six in the top 20, and three in the top 10, including our trailblazing Clinical Program, which is tied for no. 1.
We also intensified our commitment to diversity, community, civility, and respect, expanding the diversity of our tenure- track and term faculty and senior staff. We launched a first- generation student orientation, and our new Sport and Society
2 THE ADVOCATE SUMMER/FALL 2023
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