UCLA School of Law Names Rachel F. Moran Dean

Monday, June 7, 2010

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UCLA School of Law Names Rachel F. Moran Dean

By a MetNews Staff Writer

The UCLA School of Law said Friday that it has selected UC Berkeley School of Law professor Rachel F. Moran to become its eighth dean.

The school said Moran, who teaches torts, education law, and race and the law, will assume the role of dean and professor of law on Oct. 15, and will be the first Latina dean of a top-ranked U.S. law school.

“I’m very pleased to welcome Rachel Moran to the UCLA community,” UCLA Chancellor Gene Block said. “As a long-standing University of California faculty member, she is well acquainted with the university’s unique role in higher education. Her record of scholarship has earned her the highest regard among her peers, and I am confident the School of Law will continue to thrive with her visionary leadership and commitment to academic excellence.”

‘Honor and a Privilege’

Moran called it “an honor and a privilege to serve as dean,” adding:

“UCLA Law is a great law school and, just as importantly, a great public law school. Long-standing traditions of access, innovation, excellence and service are a critically important part of the institution’s mission. I look forward to working with the UCLA Law community and campus leadership to preserve these core commitments as we build upon the school’s many strengths and accomplishments. Together, we can prepare a new generation of lawyers with the knowledge, skills and ethical compass to make a difference.”

Moran is currently the Robert D. and Leslie-Kay Raven Professor of Law at the UC Berkeley School of Law, and joined that school’s faculty in 1983. She served as chair of the law school’s Chicano/Latino Policy Project from 1993 to 1996, and was director of the Institute for the Study of Social Change from 2003 to 2008.

In 1995, she received a distinguished teaching award from the Berkeley campus. She also served as president of the Association of American Law Schools in 2009.

Following college at Stanford and law school at Yale, Moran—who joined the State Bar in 1984—clerked for Chief Judge Wilfred Feinberg of the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and worked for the San Francisco firm of Heller Ehrman White & McAuliffe.

UC Irvine Professor

In addition to her position at Berkeley, she was a founding faculty member at the UC Irvine School of Law, and she has served as a visiting professor at UCLA, Stanford Law School, New York University School of Law, the University of Miami Law School and the University of Texas. Moran has also published and lectured on education law and policy, family law, and civil rights and anti-discrimination law.

Interim UCLA Law School Dean Stephen C. Yeazell commented that Moran’s selection was “a great triumph” for the school.

“Rachel Moran is a respected and accomplished legal scholar, an excellent and dedicated teacher and a terrific institution builder,” he said. “I am confident that under her leadership UCLA School of Law will reach the next level of excellence.”

Moran succeeds Michael H. Schill, who served as UCLA law’s dean from 2004 to 2009. Yeazell will return to his full-time position on the UCLA law faculty, the school said.

Moran was born in Kansas City, Mo., and reared in Yuma, Ariz. In an interview posted on the UC Irvine law school’s website, she said she went to law school instead of pursuing a Ph.D. in psychology after initially struggling with the decision.

“In college, I helped two of my professors with research that made the case for adopting guidelines for women in the construction industry,” she said. “The Department of Labor had said that women had no interest in construction jobs, but our findings showed that there was considerable interest when guidelines made the jobs seem accessible. Afterward, I was driving down the highway and spotted a woman in a hardhat working on a construction project. That experience made me realize how powerful law could be in changing people’s lives.”