Suellyn Scarnecchia

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Suellyn Scarnecchia is the current dean of University of New Mexico's School of Law [1]. She has held the position since 2003 and is the first female dean of that law school.

Scarnecchia received her bachelor's degree from Northwestern University and her law degree from the University of Michigan, where she returned to teach in that law school's clinical program after several years in private practice. While teaching in the clinic, Scarnecchia focused on the clinic's children's law advocacy program.

Scarnecchia later worked as an administrator at the University of Michigan Law School and in the University of Michigan provost's office before assuming the deanship at New Mexico.

Controversy has attended Dean Scarnecchia's tenure at the law school, culminating in an editorial [2] in the Albuquerque Journal by Christina Hoff Sommers in October, 2006. The editorial reports that while the students at the University of New Mexico law school are politically diverse, the faculty contains no conservative or Republican voices whatsoever. Furthermore, the editorial alleges, students who do not share the law faculty's political complexion frequently find themselves isolated and marginalized by the law faculty--who, for example, explicitly discourage students from joining the Federalist Society. Dean Scarnecchia, the editorial implies, played an important role in a recent decision wherein the faculty dissolved the "DA Law Clinic", which allowed students to work with the District Attorney's Office. According to the editorial, many law faculty are so extreme in their political radicalism that they were not comfortable allowing their students to work prosecuting criminals.