Schwab

After a decade as the Allan R. Tessler Dean of Cornell Law School, Stewart J. Schwab will step down in June 2014. Schwab’s second term as dean ends in December, and he will stay on for the spring term. A nationwide search to fill the deanship will soon be underway.

Provost Kent Fuchs is assembling a search committee composed primarily of Cornell Law faculty members, chaired by Senior Vice Provost John Siliciano, a member of the Law School faculty.

“I have enjoyed my time as dean,” said Schwab. “Cornell Law has a collegial faculty that sees the best in each other; students who are talented, hardworking and enjoy learning the law; and loyal alumni who lead lives of distinction and are dedicated to improving the school. These factors have let us accomplish many things over the last decade.”

Schwab, on the Law School faculty since 1983, was appointed dean in 2004. During his leadership, he has renewed and grown the Law School’s faculty, enhanced the school’s connections across campus, and initiated the first major renovations to Myron Taylor Hall in 25 years. Other Law School milestones under Schwab’s leadership:

• the most successful fundraising year in the history of the Law School, 2012;
• expansion of the school’s business law curriculum with new deals and transactional law classes;
• creation of new clinical studies opportunities in securities law, labor law, LGBT rights and juvenile justice;
• the launch of several new programs, institutes and projects including the Clarke Business Law Institute, the Cornell e-Rulemaking Initiative, the Avon Global Center for Women and Justice, the Clarke Initiative for Law and Development in the Middle East and North Africa and the expansion of the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies; and
• establishment and expansion of exchange partnerships with some two dozen universities around the world.

Schwab plans to return to the Cornell Law faculty after a sabbatical in the 2014-15 term.

Owen Lubozynski is a freelance writer for Cornell Law School.