Mary Anne Bobinski (Courtesy photo)

Emory University is the latest institution celebrating the arrival of its first female law dean. Campus leaders announced Thursday that Mary Anne Bobinski will assume the deanship of the Atlanta law school in August, making her the first woman to lead the school in its 103-year history.

“Mary Anne Bobinski is a nationally recognized legal scholar in health law and one that leads with an eye towards the impact lawyers can have on society,” said Emory President Claire Sterk in an announcement of the appointment. “Her track record of inclusiveness and ideals around collective impact will enhance our program and deepen our relationships with the legal community and beyond.”

Bobinski will bring leadership experience to the post. She served as dean of the University of British Columbia's Allard School of Law from 2003 to 2015 and is currently on the faculty there. She will replace interim law dean James Hughes, Jr., who has served in that position since 2017, when former dean Robert Schapiro stepped down after five years.

Emory joins the University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law in selecting women to run its law campus for the first time, and the appointment bolsters what has been an unusually strong season for women and minorities taking dean positions. Wake Forest University School of Law; Stanford Law School; Pennsylvania State University—Dickinson School of Law; and the University of Cincinnati College of Law are among the other schools bringing in new female deans this summer. With Bobinski coming on board, women will oversee nearly a third of the top 30 law schools in the country, as ranked by U.S. News & World Report. (Emory is currently ranked No. 26.)

Bobinski's appointment is also notable because she is coming from a Canadian law school, and movement of legal academics across the northern border is not common. Before arriving at Allard, Bobinski was on the faculty of the University of Houston Law Center.

“I am truly honored to join Emory Law and look forward to working with the law school community, alumni, and others to develop and implement an ambitious plan for the law school's future,” Bobinski said in a prepared statement.

While in the deanship at Allard, Bobinski led a successful effort to raise funds for and construct a new law school building, which cost $56 million Canadian dollars and opened in 2011. She also increased the school's endowment.

“In Mary Anne Bobinski not only have we found a distinguished legal scholar, but a leader whose vision and strategic approach led to her law school's recognition as one of the strongest programs in Canada and one of the top 35 law schools in the world,” said Emory Provost  Dwight A. McBride.

The law school's search for a new dean was not without bumps in the road. Schapiro stepped down in the summer of 2017, and central administrators appointed retired Alston & Bird partner Judson Graves to serve as interim dean starting Aug. 1. That decision was made without input from the law faculty, according to University of Chicago law professor and legal blogger Brian Leiter.

About a month later, McBride, who had recently come on board as provost, reportedly told the faculty Graves was stepping aside and that Hughes, who has been on the faculty since 1992, was taking over as interim dean. Moreover, McBride told the faculty he was suspending the dean search while the university performed as assessment of the law school. Hughes went on to serve as interim dean for two academic years—an unusually long tenure for the temporary dean.