How does a 36-year-old associate professor with no courtroom experience or executive experience get picked as dean of Wayne Law School?
Records show that Jocelyn Benson was fast-tracked from the beginning.
In 2005, Benson was hired as an associate professor at Wayne State University Law School without being a member of the state bar, though she joined the bar in May 2006.
When she was hired, Benson had no courtroom experience. Just a Harvard Law degree and a federal clerkship in Detroit under Judge Damon Keith.
In December 2012, Benson was promoted to interim dean of the law school. Then, in June 2014, Benson had the interim label removed. She was 36, the youngest law school dean in America.
“She is the youngest candidate, and the best known to us,” wrote then-Dykema attorney Kathyrn Humphrey, in a brief to the law school’s Board of Visitors as the board considered a slate of four candidates.
There was Benson, the in-house, hometown pick.
There was Danielle Conway, an attorney for the U.S. Pacific Command in Hawaii. Conway was a Fulbright Scholar with a specialty in government contracts law.
Kary L. Moss is a name known in Michigan. She had led the Michigan chapter of the ACLU since 1998. She would ultimately stay at the Michigan ACLU until 2018, before moving to the national organization.
Christopher Peters was a professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law. Before that post, Peters was a tenured professor and interim associate dean at Wayne Law.
The other candidates in the school’s national search had longer resumes and more practical experience than Benson. Even at the civil-rights center named for her former boss, Benson never rose above associate director.
But Benson was already in-house, and hometown advantage carried the day.
Conway is now dean of the Dickinson Law School at Penn State and is president of the American Association of Law Schools.
Moss left the ACLU of Michigan for the national ACLU in 2018. Now she’s director of affiliate support and nationwide initiatives.
Peters went on to serve as dean of the University of Akron School of Law.
Before being tapped as interim dean, the closest thing to an executive position Benson ever held was board chair of her own nonprofit, the Michigan Center for Election Law and Administration.
Benson left Wayne Law after just two years as dean. In September 2016, she left to become CEO of a nonprofit called RISE, the Ross Initiative in Sports for Equality, bankrolled by billionaire Stephen Ross. RISE says it exists to “improve race relations.”
When running for Secretary of State in 2018, Benson continued to draw a $300,000 salary from RISE.
Michigan Enjoyer filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the informational packets offered by each candidate in the search and records of the deliberation process that led to Benson’s hire.
Wayne Law sent the packets but not the deliberation, citing “privacy” grounds. Deliberative process privilege is an exemption from the FOIA law.
James David Dickson is an enjoyer of Michigan. Join him in conversation on X at @downi75.
