Justice, Law School Deans, Law Schools

John Manning Named New Dean Of Harvard Law School, White Men Rejoice

Women and minority groups wanted a different guy.

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New HLS Dean John Manning with former HLS Dean Elena Kagan.

New HLS Dean John Manning with former HLS Dean Elena Kagan.

Harvard Law School has named deputy law school dean John Manning to succeed Martha Minow and take over as dean of HLS on July 1st.

Manning’s scholarship focuses on statutory interpretation and Constitutional structure. He’s a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, and he clerked for both Robert Bork on the D.C. Circuit and Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court.

That’s right, HLS followed two successive women deans, one of whom currently sits on the Supreme Court, with a Bork/Scalia clerk.

In related news, Manning was opposed by pretty much every legal “affinity” group you can think of on campus. If HLS admitted Martian law students, the Martians would have opposed John Manning. The choice of the non-white-males at Harvard Law was professor David Wilkins. Wilkins’s scholarship focuses on the legal profession and legal ethics. THAT SEEMS KIND OF IMPORTANT RIGHT NOW.

But hey, score one for the white guys. We know things are tough for them right now, what with running all three branches of the government and all.

Usually, when a new dean gets named at a prestigious law school, there are tons of well wishers commending the choice. Manning is no different. But for the past couple hours, I’ve been searching “John Manning” on Twitter, and in my unscientific scanning, I really haven’t seen non-white-men taking to Twitter to congratulate the new dean. I’m sure that there are one or two that I missed. Hell, 53% of white women voted for Donald Trump, so we know they’re out there. The school did manage to wring comment for a positive press release out of former dean Elena Kagan.

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I know how the internet works; as soon as I publish this, conservatives are going to go find some women who support Manning, even if they have to create them like Kelly LeBrock in Weird Science. But if you look at social media (and, you know, my inbox of disappointed HLS grads who are women or of color) as of this writing, you’d think that Manning is here to serve only one segment of the HLS community.

And that segment, the white male segment, is ecstatic:

There’s Jonathan Adler:

There’s conservative philosopher Robert George:

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Conservative think-tanker Ed Whelan is here:

Paul Horowitz on Prawfsblog wrote a whole thing about Manning:

The President of Rice University is a fan:

You take my point. To the extent that HLS was trying to impress white male thinkers and scholars, consider this appointment a great success. I’m sad I couldn’t get the Winklevoss twins to chime in.

To the extent that HLS was looking for a consensus choice among its diverse constituencies, the Manning rollout looks pretty pathetic. If all the white guys are grinning like they hit the Keno in Watertown, and but you struggle to find women or people of color to even send out a nice Tweet, your choice is perhaps more polarizing than you and all your white-boy friends anticipated.

I guess white guys who went to Harvard Law School were due for a victory. The world can be so very very hard on them.

Manning, Professor and Constitutional Law Scholar, Named Law School Dean [Harvard Crimson]

Elie Mystal is an editor of Above the Law and the Legal Editor for More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at elie@abovethelaw.com. He will resist.

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