RICHARD REVESZ NAMED DEAN OF NYU SCHOOL OF LAW

Richard Revesz, the Lawrence King Professor of Law at New York University School of Law, has been selected after a national and international search as the 14th dean of the NYU School of Law. He succeeds John Sexton, who last May was tapped to be NYU’s President after 14 years as the Law School’s Dean. Professor Revesz will assume the deanship June 1, 2002.

“I am delighted to announce that Richard Revesz will be our next Dean,” Dean Sexton said. “The search process, which focused on a remarkably talented set of external and internal candidates, ratified our sense that NYU today is both one of the three or four leading law schools and a school with an enormous capacity to become even more than it is. Our objective is to continue to create a new version of legal education. Professor Revesz is a first-rate scholar and administrator, and he is possessed of the vision and energy to lead us to the next level.

“I want to thank Professor Michael Schill, chair of the Search Committee, and all those who participated in the task of identifying our new dean. They performed magnificently.”

“Choosing a dean is the most important decision a law school makes,” said Professor Schill. “In making our decision, the Search Committee sought intensive consultation with all of the law school community. Under John’s tenure, the institution experienced a transformation into a leadership law school; in doing so, it enjoyed an extraordinary trajectory of improvement, probably unprecedented and definitely unique over recent decades among law schools. We were searching for a dean who could continue the progress and build upon the foundation that John had laid. Thus, we scoured the country and world looking for people whom we thought would be excellent deans.”

Lester Pollack, chair of the Law School Foundation Board of Trustees, said: “Those who are a part of the Law School community understand and recognize its special qualities. Those qualities obliged a particularly careful, reflective, and wide-ranging search, one which would yield candidates of real talent and vision. We are gratified that the search has produced such a fine choice to lead the School of Law in the coming years. I have no doubt that the great accomplishments that have been achieved at the Law School in the last few years will serve as a foundation for even greater achievements during Dean Revesz’s tenure.”

Martin Lipton, chair of the NYU Board of Trustees, said: “The entire University is pleased and made proud by Richard Revesz’s selection as dean of the School of Law. The Law School has established itself as an institution that other law schools aspire to and emulate. I am certain that Dean Revesz who has been an important contributor to that effort, will continue to build and expand upon that work, and in so doing contribute to the reputation of the University as a whole.”

“It was a great honor for me as a student of the Law School to serve on the Search Committee for our new dean,” said Rishi Bhandari. “From an exceptional field of candidates, we have chosen a new dean, an exemplary scholar, teacher and administrator, who will carry on the noble traditions of our great institution.”

The search for a new dean began in October, when the Search Committee was formed and charged by Sexton and NYU President L. Jay Oliva to begin an intensive search for a new dean. A pool of 65 candidates was reduced to 22 seriously considered candidates. Eight external candidates were interviewed; two internal candidates were considered. A report submitted in late February by the Search Committee to Sexton and Oliva recommended two candidates.

Members of the Search Committee were:

Rishi Bhandari, NYU Law student Oscar Chase, Professor of Law, NYU Law Florence Davis, alumna and Trustee, NYU Law Harry First, Professor of Law, NYU Law Richard Foley, Dean, Faculty of Arts and Science, NYU Lewis Kornhauser, Alfred and Gail Engelberg Professor of Law, NYU Law Rick Pildes, Professor of Law, NYU Law Michael Schill (Chair), Professor of Law and Urban Planning, NYU Law Kim Taylor-Thompson, Professor of Clinical Law, NYU Law Anthony Welters, alumnus and Trustee, NYU Law Joanne Wilhelm, Campaign Director, NYU

Lester Pollack, chair of the NYU School of Law Foundation Board of Trustees, served as an ex-officio member of the Search Committee.

Paul Francis, alumnus, NYU Law, served as chair of Trustees Committee on the Search.

“It is a great honor to be given the opportunity to lead NYU Law School, and to follow in the footsteps of Dean John Sexton, who is undoubtedly the finest law school dean in recent history,” said Professor Revesz. “As a result of the Law School’s spectacular course, we are now poised to become the nation’s leading law school. If we do things right over the next cycle, I believe that we will achieve this goal. And leading us there will be enormously exciting.”

Richard Revesz, 43 and born in Argentina, is the Lawrence King Professor of Law at the New York University School of Law. In 1979, Professor Revesz received his B.S.E., summa cum laude, from Princeton University where he majored in Civil Engineering and Public Affairs. He subsequently received an M. S. degree in Civil Engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1980. Professor Revesz was awarded his J.D. in 1983 from the Yale Law School, where he was editor-in-chief of the Yale Law Journal.

After law school, Professor Revesz clerked for The Honorable Wilfred Feinberg of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and then for The Honorable Thurgood Marshall of the United States Supreme Court. He joined the NYU faculty in 1985, was promoted to associate professor in 1988 and was granted tenure and a promotion to professor in 1990. Professor Revesz has visited over the years at several schools including Harvard, Yale, Princeton and the University of Geneva. He is admitted to practice in New York State and in Washington, D.C.

Professor Revesz has published over 50 articles and books in two principal areas---environmental law and policy and administrative law. He teaches courses in Environmental Law, Administrative Law and Advanced Environmental Law. He has been active in a variety of public policy and law reform efforts during his time on the NYU faculty. For example, he has served as a member of the Environmental Economics Advisory Committee of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Science Advisory Board since 1999. In 1998, he assumed the role of Co-Reporter for the Judicial Review section of the Administrative Procedure Act Project of the American Bar Association Section on Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice. He also has been a member of the Board of Directors of the American Law and Economics Association since 1999.

Over his seventeen years on the NYU faculty, Professor Revesz has been active in a number of administrative capacities. He chaired the Personnel Committee from 1990 to 1992 and the Clerkship Committee from 1996 to 1999. Since 1994, he has been the co-director of NYU’s nationally acclaimed study of innovative financial aid mechanisms, which has led to a national reform of the financial aid practices of the leading law schools.

Professor Revesz is married to NYU Law School Professor Vicki Been. They met when they both served as clerks from 1984-85 on the U.S. Supreme Court. They have two children.

NYU’s School of Law, founded in 1835, stands as a premier research and teaching institution and as an outstanding community of new ideas – a place in which students address the most fundamental concepts and questions facing societies. The School of Law faculty, the largest and one of the most distinguished national and international faculties in the world, displays strength across a broad range of fields, from the theoretical to the practical. This diversity is reflected in the curriculum, most particularly in the pioneering law methods and in broadening the traditional compass of legal education. NYU’s Global Law School Program has led the way in "globalizing" law study and preparing students for the increasingly international nature of their work.

NYU’s Law School now draws students from every state and from nearly four dozen foreign countries. The median student entering in fall 2002 was in the top 1 % of law school applicants. Having admitted its first woman in 1892, NYU Law’s 2002 entering student body was 51 % women. Its graduates now obtain the most prestigious legal jobs. Over the past two years, for example, the International Court of Justice (The World Court) has selected NYU students exclusively (five each year) for its prestigious clerkships.

New York University, which was established in 1831, is one of the largest and most prestigious private research universities in the U.S. It receives more applications for freshman admission and has more international students than any other private college or university in the nation. Through its 13 schools and colleges, NYU conducts research and provides education in the arts and sciences; law; medicine; dentistry; education; nursing; business; social work; the cinematic, studio and performing arts; public administration and policy; and continuing studies, among other areas.

03/01/02