Professors Criticize Law Dean Search

Amid student demands for a formal role in the selection of a successor to Albert M. Sacks, dean of the Law School, 17 Law School faculty members last week asked the faculty to change the procedure for choosing deans in the future.

In an internal memo, the professors called the current procedure "unsatisfactory" and asked the faculty to establish a search committee of faculty, students and outsiders to evaluate future candidates for dean.

Still Bok's Choice

The proposal would leave the ultimate choice of a dean with President Bok, and would not affect the present search for a dean.

Bok this month rejected a proposal by student leaders to create a student committee that would have interviewed the final candidates in the current search.

"Bok ought to have changed the procedure before this selection of dean, because the present procedure is outrageous," Duncan M. Kennedy, professor of Law, and a signatory of the memo, said yesterday. He added that he does not think the memo will affect Bok's choice of a replacement for Sacks, who will step down next summer.

The current selection procedure "looks as though it is based on objective standouts," but is really "an intrinsically political decision," Kennedy said.

Bok was not available for comment yesterday.

C. Clyde Ferguson, professor of Law, said yesterday the memo was "not directed at the present process, but looks to the future." Bok has "bent over backwards to consult with faculty," and "we trust him," he added.

Full Participation

The dean would be "a hell of a lot better off" if the faculty formally was involved in choosing him, Ferguson said, adding that in the future there ought to be full participation by faculty and students in the selection.

Bok preceded Sacks as dean of the law school before becoming president in 1971, and the memo refers to him as "one of us."

Several Law School student organizations and the Coalition on Responsible Dean Selection (CORDS) plan to protest the current process because it is "unfair, illegitimate, and blatantly discriminatory," Larry Coben, a CORDS spokesman, said.

Student Interviews

CORDS will interview the "obvious inside candidates" and will compile students' views on them, he added.

The organization will also urge students to refuse to write letters to Bok about their views, because it "is not an effective way to channel student input," Fritz Byers, a member of CORDS, said this month.

Sacks announced his resignation this summer, saying he believed a ten-year tenure was long enough.

Other law professors who signed the memo include Alan M. Defshowitz, Morton J. Horwitz, Laurence H. Tribe. and Derrick Bell.

They were unavailable for comment yesterday.