Are You Sitting Down? John Manning, the new dean of Harvard Law, is a conservative.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/are-you-sitting-down-1496791193?mod=nwsrl_commentary_u_s_
These pages have been reporting on the intellectual decline of American higher education, but maybe all is not lost. One near-miraculous sign of life is the appointment of constitutional law professor John Manning as the next dean of Harvard Law School.
Mr. Manning, who joined the law school faculty in 2004, takes over a post on July 1 that is typically held by a liberal, most notably by current Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan. He is a well-known expert on administrative law and statutory interpretation who doesn’t hide his jurisprudential conservatism.
The new dean has served two stints at the Justice Department and clerked for the late Justice Antonin Scalia, as well as the late Judge Robert Bork on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. Following that distinguished tutelage, Mr. Manning has become one of the premier textualists in the legal academy, meaning that he emphasizes the importance of lawyers and judges reading and interpreting the plain text of a law.
Mr. Manning has been deputy dean and perhaps his competence in that role made him a natural choice for promotion. But in an academy that usually treats conservatives like the walking dead, credit Harvard for promoting on merit regardless of ideology.
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