New Law School dean named for next year; star scholars hired

Daniel R. Fischel, JD'77, a leading scholar in law and economics, has been appointed dean of the Law School beginning July 1, when current dean Douglas Baird will return to full-time teaching and scholarship at the end of his five-year term. Fischel, the Lee and Brena Freeman professor of law and business, joined the Law School in 1984, pioneering the legal analysis of corporate law subjects such as hostile takeovers, securities fraud litigation, and corporate crime. The Economic Structure of Corporate Law, a text he coauthored with Law School senior lecturer Frank Easterbrook, JD'73, a Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals judge, has become a standard reference in the field. Fischel also directed the program in law and economics for eight years, was a professor in the Graduate School of Business, and this year chaired the Law School appointments committee.

This past year, Fischel and Baird worked together to hire eight new professors, a coup that the National Law Journal called "the second greatest law school faculty raid of all time-if not the greatest." The new faculty members are Saul Levmore, who taught corporate law at the University of Virginia; Lisa E. Bernstein, AB'86, a commercial law professor at Georgetown University Law Center; Eric Posner, a corporate and commercial law scholar from the University of Pennsylvania, also son of Law School senior lecturer Richard A. Posner, chief judge of the Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals; international taxation expert Julie Roin, formerly of the University of Virginia; tax specialist David Weis- bach, from Georgetown; Adrian Vermeule, a Georgetown research follow who works on statutory interpretation; Jill E. Hasday, who writes on family law and federal jurisdiction; and Douglas G. Lichtman, a Yale research fellow who studies intellectual property and cyberspace law.