{"id":128772,"date":"2025-07-28T16:15:11","date_gmt":"2025-07-29T00:15:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2025\/07\/28\/colorado-law-school-dean-reappointed-amid-mass-faculty-disapproval\/"},"modified":"2025-07-28T16:15:11","modified_gmt":"2025-07-29T00:15:11","slug":"colorado-law-school-dean-reappointed-amid-mass-faculty-disapproval","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2025\/07\/28\/colorado-law-school-dean-reappointed-amid-mass-faculty-disapproval\/","title":{"rendered":"Colorado Law School Dean Reappointed Amid Mass Faculty Disapproval"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A paltry 27 percent of eligible faculty favored reappointing Dean Lolita Buckner Inniss. Meanwhile, some 90 percent of student group leaders solicited for their thoughts also objected to her keeping the job. In response, the University of Colorado Law School decided\u2026 to reappoint the dean.<\/p>\n

At this point, Colorado Law might just be trolling its faculty and students for kicks.<\/p>\n

More faculty explicitly voted against granting the dean another run at the post \u2014 roughly 38 percent \u2014 while a handful formally abstained and a quarter just refused to vote one way or the other. The ABA actually has a rule<\/a> against appointing deans \u201cover the stated objection of a substantial majority of the faculty\u201d without good cause. The school hasn\u2019t gone into that. But Trump wants to eliminate the ABA\u2019s status as the official law school accreditor<\/a> \u2014 presumably so he can set up Trump University College of Law if he ever leaves office. Maybe the school feels it can get in the administration\u2019s good graces by breaching the ABA\u2019s accreditation rules first!<\/p>\n

The reappointment confounds on a lot of levels. Back in 2023, Colorado professor Paul Campos sued the school<\/a> for discrimination after a curiously low evaluation that no one would explain<\/a>. The school settled in 2024 because the dean responded to the suit by removing Campos from a key committee assignment, leaving a paper trail of retaliation that was as much \u201cbad litigation strategy<\/a>\u201d as Labor & Employment final exam hypo. Since retaliating against employees rarely works out unless you have six justices on speed dial<\/a> \u2014 the school covered all of Campos\u2019s legal fees and gave him a chunk of money to end the case.<\/p>\n

As Campos himself said of the reappointment in comments to the local news, \u201cIf you essentially have your institution admit you\u2019ve been found liable for violating the civil rights of one of your tenured faculty members, and not only did (the university) settle (the lawsuit) for a significant amount of money but you get removed as that person\u2019s immediate supervisor \u2026 it\u2019s kind of amazing someone would get reappointed under those circumstances.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hey, they reappointed Alina Habba and there are explicit statutes against that<\/a>, so anything\u2019s possible in 2025.<\/p>\n

But as Campos explains in a post over at Lawyers, Guns, Money<\/a>, it\u2019s not just a matter of his personal legal issues with the dean\u2019s tenure. While the dean claimed that diversity is her primary goal, faculty pointed to the school losing multiple non-white scholars under her leadership. At the same time, the school is hiring like mad, pushing its faculty-student ratio down to Yale & Stanford levels without finding a way to bring in Yale & Stanford levels of money.<\/p>\n

\n

The financial situation is so bad that, despite the enormous subsidy, equal to 104% of its self-generated revenues, the law school gets from central campus \u2014 this in practice means from all those \u201cuseless\u201d humanities and social science departments, many of which haven\u2019t been allowed to make a new full-time hire in years (the law school made eight in 2025) \u2014 the law school was unable to pay faculty and staff raises out of its regular budget this spring, and had to raid gift funds in order to do so. Regental and university rules don\u2019t allow us not to pay the regent-approved raises, so as soon as we can no longer raid this particular piggy bank we\u2019ll have to start laying people off, probably next year, or at the latest the year after that.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It\u2019s not entirely clear how the university expects to attract and retain talent while explicitly broadcasting that dissenting voices might as well pack up their desks in advance. But maybe that\u2019s the point. If the school finds itself on the brink of layoffs, it might behoove them to push people out the door. <\/p>\n

Still, is there no one out there clamoring to be a law school dean? Because you\u2019d think a search might turn up someone willing to consider the job. Maybe even someone who hadn\u2019t embroiled a school in a public and damaging discrimination case.<\/p>\n

\n

\"Headshot\"Joe Patrice<\/a>\u00a0is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer<\/a>. Feel free to\u00a0email<\/a> any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on\u00a0Twitter<\/a>\u00a0or Bluesky<\/a> if you\u2019re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search<\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The post Colorado Law School Dean Reappointed Amid Mass Faculty Disapproval<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A paltry 27 percent of eligible faculty favored reappointing Dean Lolita Buckner Inniss. Meanwhile, some 90 percent of student group leaders solicited for their thoughts also objected to her keeping the job. In response, the University of Colorado Law School decided\u2026 to reappoint the dean.<\/p>\n

At this point, Colorado Law might just be trolling its faculty and students for kicks.<\/p>\n

More faculty explicitly voted against granting the dean another run at the post \u2014 roughly 38 percent \u2014 while a handful formally abstained and a quarter just refused to vote one way or the other. The ABA actually has a rule<\/a> against appointing deans \u201cover the stated objection of a substantial majority of the faculty\u201d without good cause. The school hasn\u2019t gone into that. But Trump wants to eliminate the ABA\u2019s status as the official law school accreditor<\/a> \u2014 presumably so he can set up Trump University College of Law if he ever leaves office. Maybe the school feels it can get in the administration\u2019s good graces by breaching the ABA\u2019s accreditation rules first!<\/p>\n

The reappointment confounds on a lot of levels. Back in 2023, Colorado professor Paul Campos sued the school<\/a> for discrimination after a curiously low evaluation that no one would explain<\/a>. The school settled in 2024 because the dean responded to the suit by removing Campos from a key committee assignment, leaving a paper trail of retaliation that was as much \u201cbad litigation strategy<\/a>\u201d as Labor & Employment final exam hypo. Since retaliating against employees rarely works out unless you have six justices on speed dial<\/a> \u2014 the school covered all of Campos\u2019s legal fees and gave him a chunk of money to end the case.<\/p>\n

As Campos himself said of the reappointment in comments to the local news, \u201cIf you essentially have your institution admit you\u2019ve been found liable for violating the civil rights of one of your tenured faculty members, and not only did (the university) settle (the lawsuit) for a significant amount of money but you get removed as that person\u2019s immediate supervisor \u2026 it\u2019s kind of amazing someone would get reappointed under those circumstances.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hey, they reappointed Alina Habba and there are explicit statutes against that<\/a>, so anything\u2019s possible in 2025.<\/p>\n

But as Campos explains in a post over at Lawyers, Guns, Money<\/a>, it\u2019s not just a matter of his personal legal issues with the dean\u2019s tenure. While the dean claimed that diversity is her primary goal, faculty pointed to the school losing multiple non-white scholars under her leadership. At the same time, the school is hiring like mad, pushing its faculty-student ratio down to Yale & Stanford levels without finding a way to bring in Yale & Stanford levels of money.<\/p>\n

\n

The financial situation is so bad that, despite the enormous subsidy, equal to 104% of its self-generated revenues, the law school gets from central campus \u2014 this in practice means from all those \u201cuseless\u201d humanities and social science departments, many of which haven\u2019t been allowed to make a new full-time hire in years (the law school made eight in 2025) \u2014 the law school was unable to pay faculty and staff raises out of its regular budget this spring, and had to raid gift funds in order to do so. Regental and university rules don\u2019t allow us not to pay the regent-approved raises, so as soon as we can no longer raid this particular piggy bank we\u2019ll have to start laying people off, probably next year, or at the latest the year after that.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It\u2019s not entirely clear how the university expects to attract and retain talent while explicitly broadcasting that dissenting voices might as well pack up their desks in advance. But maybe that\u2019s the point. If the school finds itself on the brink of layoffs, it might behoove them to push people out the door. <\/p>\n

Still, is there no one out there clamoring to be a law school dean? Because you\u2019d think a search might turn up someone willing to consider the job. Maybe even someone who hadn\u2019t embroiled a school in a public and damaging discrimination case.<\/p>\n

\n

\"Headshot\"Joe Patrice<\/a>\u00a0is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer<\/a>. Feel free to\u00a0email<\/a> any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on\u00a0Twitter<\/a>\u00a0or Bluesky<\/a> if you\u2019re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search<\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A paltry 27 percent of eligible faculty favored reappointing Dean Lolita Buckner Inniss. Meanwhile, some 90 percent of student group leaders solicited for their thoughts also objected to her keeping the job. In response, the University of Colorado Law School decided\u2026 to reappoint the dean. At this point, Colorado Law might just be trolling its […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":128740,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-128772","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-above_the_law"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/xira.com\/p\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Headshot-300x200-tIsPP9.jpg?fit=300%2C200&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128772","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128772"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128772\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/128740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}