Currie appointed Acting Dean of Law School

David Currie, the Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor in the Law School, has been appointed Acting Dean of the Law School by President Sonnenschein. Currie will become Acting Dean on Jan. 1, 1994, when Geoffrey Stone, the present Dean of the Law School, begins his service as Provost.

Currie was also appointed Deputy Dean of the Law School by Stone and began serving in that position on Nov. 1 to ensure a smooth transition.

Currie, a University faculty member since 1962, is an authority on the Supreme Court, environmental law, federal jurisdiction and civil procedure.

"I am delighted Mr. Currie has accepted the appointment as Acting Dean. It is an act of great selflessness on his part, and one for which I am deeply grateful. I appreciate his willingness to take on these tasks and provide strong continuity and leadership for the Law School," Sonnenschein said.

Currie received his A.B. in 1957 from Chicago and his LL.B. in 1960 from Harvard Law School, where he was developments editor of the Harvard Law Review. He was law clerk to Judge Henry Friendly of the U.S. Court of Appeals from 1960 to 1961 and to Justice Felix Frankfurter of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1961 to 1962, when he joined the faculty at Chicago.

Currie served as the Illinois coordinator of environmental quality in 1970 and was chairman of the Illinois Pollution Control Board from 1970 to 1972. He became the Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor in the Law School in 1991 and was honored with the Law School's Award for Teaching Excellence in 1992. Currie has also taught at the universities of Frankfurt, Hannover and Heidelberg in Germany.

He is the author of three major casebooks: "Cases and Materials on Federal Courts," "Cases and Materials on Pollution" and "Cases and Materials on Conflict of Laws," as well as a two-volume history of the Supreme Court, "The Constitution in the Supreme Court: The First Hundred Years" (1985) and "The Second Century" (1990). He also wrote "The Constitution of the United States: A Primer for the People" (1988), a layperson's guide to understanding the Constitution.