Law school deans have a weird job description. Technically, they lead the law school in its academic mission. But, more realistically, they fundraise, game the U.S. News rankings, and manage the law school bureaucracy. Ideally, they keep the alumni happy at football games — or basketball games depending on the school in question. A unicorn dean also serves as a leading intellectual light carrying the program’s scholarly banner, but… all else equal, the university will prefer someone who knows how to get that local car dealer from the class of ’72 to slap their name on a new building.
When Kentucky Law announced that Judge Gregory Van Tatenhove of the Eastern District of Kentucky would assume the deanship, it seemed like the school had finally gotten its ducks in a row. After all, the school hasn’t had permanent dean since Mary J. Davis stepped back from the role back in 2024, and a pair of previous dean searches failed to find anyone. Stability appeared to be on the horizon. But underneath the surface, the announcement kicked a hornet’s nest.
Or, at Kentucky Law, a cockroach nest.
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According to the Louisville Courier Journal, weeks before that March 6 announcement, UK law faculty told university officials that a “substantial majority” of them found Van Tatenhove “unacceptable”:
In a February email obtained by The Courier Journal, UK law school associate deans Joshua Douglas and Beau Steenken told law faculty they had sent an email to DiPaola and others involved in the dean search informing them that a “substantial majority of the faculty expressed that Candidate D does not meet the standards of the candidate profile” the university put forward.
Candidate D, obviously, was Judge Van Tatenhove. The other three finalists — Michael Higdon, Mary Graw Leary, and Milena Sterio — were all conventional academic picks and rated as acceptable to the faculty. The university disregarded the faculty pick and announced Option D anyway.
Did we mention that the judge served as a legislative aide to Mitch McConnell and chief of staff to GOP Rep. Ron Lewis? Well, he did. From the university’s perspective, a politically connected former judge could be a boon to fundraising. From the faculty’s perspective, during an active Republican-led assault on academia, a Republican dean reads a lot like a white flag.
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This controversy has now roped in Kentucky’s governor, who publicly inquired about the University of Kentucky’s decision-making citing the judge’s appointment and the elevation of the school’s athletic director to a vague “executive in residence” role earning $950,000 a year through 2030.
The selection matters for the school’s accreditation because ABA Interpretation 203-1 notes: “Except in circumstances demonstrating good cause, a dean should not be appointed or reappointed to a new term over the stated objection of a substantial majority of the faculty.” There’s also an accreditation standard requiring the dean to hold tenure “except in extraordinary circumstances,” which should be unavailable to the judge, as he lacks the necessary scholarly qualifications. Provost Robert DiPaola, who ran the search, decided to roll past both of those standards. Faculty member Ramsi Woodcock flagged the problem to the UK president and wrote an op-ed in the Courier Journal making these procedural arguments.
But, according to the email, a “substantial majority” of the faculty “expressed” that Judge Van Tatenhove “does not meet” the job requirements advertised by the university because he lacks “experience arising from a senior-level administrative role such as department chair, center director, associate dean, or dean.”
The email also stated that Van Tatenhove “does not possess the necessary qualifications (including a record of scholarship) to be granted tenure under the Rosenberg College of Law’s current rules.” Van Tatenhove’s only academic publication appears to be a note he penned as a law student forty years ago. The ABA requires that a dean be a tenured law professor.
At any school interested in protecting its accreditation, that would have been the end of Van Tatenhove’s candidacy.
But Judge Van Tatenhove doesn’t have the scholarly record because he’s spent the last two decades as a federal judge. I don’t know as though there are established canons of construction for interpreting ABA accreditation rules, but a standard probably should not be read to prevent a school from appointing a federal judge.
That said, the school couldn’t leave well enough alone and extended this defense of Judge Van Tatenhove to an absurdist end. A Kentucky spokesperson argued that Van Tatenhove’s judicial record is, a kind of scholarship in itself, because “hundreds of his judicial opinions have been effectively peer-reviewed by the Sixth Circuit with an affirmation rate above 80%.” Insert a head-smack emoji here. The “Sixth Circuit as peer review” claim, makes you worry that they maybe they don’t understand how scholarship works.
Also, as a soon-to-be-former Kentucky professor notes of Dean Davis, “the last permanent dean of the law school has not published any legal scholarship in decades.” It’s hard to hang a hat on a standard that the faculty hasn’t worried about for years.
The ABA’s accreditation body declined to comment on a specific school, as the ABA’s accreditation body always does.
This afternoon, Above the Law has learned, the provost has called an emergency meeting. Presumably, the goal is to convince everyone to stop taking this fight to the Courier Journal.
Judge Van Tatenhove seems more than qualified to run a law school. But even if faculty shouldn’t be able to unilaterally pick their boss, they should be able to nix one. That’s a balance that the ABA standard gets right — a substantial majority just needs to not actively reject the choice. That’s a low bar, and Kentucky couldn’t clear it.
A law school can’t function if the majority of the faculty doesn’t have confidence in the dean. Maybe Judge Van Tatenhove is prepared to stand up to the anti-intellectual broadside his fellow Republicans have launched, but the faculty has ample reason to prefer — at this moment in history — a candidate from within the legal academy. The board of trustees meets April 24 to formally confirm the appointment.
As long as he’s got a plan for the cockroaches, he’ll be fine.
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Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter or Bluesky if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.