U.Va. appoints alumna as new law school dean

A professor and former vice dean has been named the next dean of the University of Virginia School of Law, the school announced Monday. Leslie Kendrick, also a U.Va. Law alumna, will succeed Risa Goluboff in July 2024, becoming the second woman to serve as the law school’s dean.

Kendrick graduated from the law school in 2006 and became a member of its faculty in 2008, and is now the White Burkett Miller Professor of Law and Public Affairs, the Elizabeth D. and Richard A. Merrill Professor of Law and director of the school’s Center for the First Amendment. She also serves as a special adviser on free expression and inquiry to U.Va.’s provost and was vice dean of the law school from 2017 to 2021, according to the university’s announcement.

“The law school has been my home since I arrived as a student 20 years ago,” Kendrick said in a statement. “I believe now, as I believed then, that the U.Va. combination of world-class research, consummate professional preparation and deep sense of community makes this the best law school in the country. The law school faculty, staff, students and alumni are my beloved colleagues and friends, and I am honored to partner with them in building the future of this exceptional institution.”

Goluboff’s last day as dean will be June 30, 2024, after serving eight years in the role. She announced her decision to step down in September, but she plans to remain at U.Va. to teach. She and Kendrick co-hosted U.Va.’s “Common Law” podcast for its first three seasons, and Goluboff said in a statement that she “cannot imagine a better prepared, more highly qualified or more exciting successor. Leslie is simply fantastic.”

Kendrick is a Kentucky native who was a Rhodes Scholar and received her master’s and doctorate degrees in English literature at the University of Oxford, after earning a bachelor’s degree in classics and English at the University of North Carolina. After deciding to enter law, Kendrick was a Hardy Cross Dillard Scholar at U.Va. and won the Margaret G. Hyde Award, the law school’s highest honor. She clerked for former U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice David Souter and for Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.

In addition to serving on the Charlottesville-Albemarle Bar Association’s executive committee, Kendrick was an adviser for an American Law Institute course on defamation and privacy, part of a series on legal principles for judges and lawyers. Her work has been published in the Yale Law Journal and the Harvard Law Review, and she received an all-university teaching award and the law school’s Carl McFarland Prize for outstanding research by a junior faculty member.

“I’m thrilled to welcome Leslie Kendrick as the new dean of the law school,” said U.Va. President Jim Ryan, a former U.Va. law professor. “She has a tremendous record of teaching and scholarship in torts and the First Amendment, and her university service has been invaluable. She ably led the committee that crafted U.Va.’s Statement on Free Expression and Free Inquiry and served as vice dean of the law school during a time of rapid growth.”