Alan Michaels Named Dean of Moritz College of Law
On Friday, Nov. 7, The Ohio State University Board of Trustees approved the appointment of Professor Alan C. Michaels as dean of The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law.
Ohio State President E. Gordon Gee and Provost Joseph Alutto recommended Michaels’ appointment. Dean Michaels, the Edwin M. Cooperman Professor of Law, was named interim dean in May after then dean Nancy Rogers was appointed as the Ohio attorney general.
“Alan is an outstanding scholar, a wonderful colleague, and totally committed to the College and the university,” Provost Alutto said. “He works effectively with the College's many constituencies and inspires and motivates all with whom he interacts. In the short time that he has served as interim dean, he has demonstrated all of these characteristics as he successfully led the College through the last stages of its strategic planning process.”
Michaels joined Moritz in 1995 and served as the College’s associate dean for faculty from 2001-03. He was raised in New York City and attended Harvard College, obtaining his degree magna cum laude in Social Studies. He went on to Columbia Law School, where he earned distinction as a Kent Scholar.
Following law school, Dean Michaels served as a law clerk to Chief Judge Wilfred Feinberg of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. In the following year, he served in the same role at the Supreme Court of the United States for Justice Harry A. Blackmun.
After his clerkship, Dean Michaels went into private practice. He was of counsel to the firm of McGuire & Tiernan in New York City, where he served as outside counsel to the Major League Baseball Players’ Association. He left that position to join the New York County District Attorney’s Office, where he worked on felony prosecutions in both street crime and white collar crime units.
At Moritz, Michaels twice received the College’s Outstanding Professor Award as voted by the graduating classes of 2000 and 1999. In 2007, Michaels was given the university’s Alumni Award for Distinguished Teaching.
Michaels’ research, primarily in the area of the mens rea of crimes and in the adjudicatory portion of criminal procedure, has been published in a variety of leading journals, including the Columbia Law Review, the Harvard Law Review, and the Southern California Law Review. He is coauthor with Moritz Professor Joshua Dressler of Understanding Criminal Procedure (4th edition) and serves as co-managing editor of the Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law. He also was the recipient of the Outstanding Scholarly Paper Award from the Association of American Law Schools in 1999.
Michaels is married to Sharon L. Davies, the John C. Elam/Vorys Sater Designated Professor of Law at Moritz. They have a daughter in college and a son who is in middle school.
Read a complete profile of Dean Michaels in the College’s next All Rise magazine.
