Controversy continues over the appointment of a dean of the University of Kentucky law school.

Eugene Volokh on the Volokh Conspiracy (Court Expresses Doubt About Lawprof’s Attempt to Block Appointment of Federal Judge as U Kentucky Law School Dean) provides an update on the court challenge by a faculty member to the new dean. As the court restated, “Professor Ramsi Woodcock, currently suspended from his teaching duties at the University of Kentucky School of Law, has sued to block former U.S. District Judge Greg Van Tatenhove from serving as the law school’s dean.”

As Volokh observes, “while there’s a recent tradition of deans being academics, it seems to me that there’s a sensible argument for sometimes having experienced members of the legal profession (including judges) as deans of what are after all professional schools. For a prominent recent example of a federal judge being named dean, without having had an earlier academic career, see David F. Levi, dean emeritus at Duke Law School.”