Michael Wolff Named New Dean Of Saint Louis Law

A day after the interim deanship of Tom Keefe at SLU imploded, the University has now announced that one of the school's two dean finalists - Saint Louis Professor Mike Wolff - is the new school's new dean.  (The other finalist was Anthony “A.J.” Chivetta, a partner at Armstrong Teasdale.)  Wolff, who received his JD from Minnesota, served as a Justice of the Missouri Supreme Court for thirteen years.  He had been a member of the Saint Louis University Law faculty for 23 years before joining the bench.

Comments

[Anon]

There is a growing and disturbing pattern of evidence that someone with administrative privileges at this blog-site has been passing IP addresses and e-mail addresses of various commentators to Brian Leiter, who in turn has been making veiled threats on his blog and in e-mails to “out” people, write to all the partners in their firm complaining about them and generally damage their careers should they show any further “insolence.”

Evidence can be found at:

http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2013/03/brian-leiters-slow-motion-car-crash

Leiter’s own site:

http://leiterlawschool.typepad.com/leiter/2013/03/we-get-mail-thomas-r-grover-esq-edition.html

and in various e-mails Leiter has sent pseudonymously (which is pretty ironic) and in his own name.
If they did disclose this sort of information the blog administrators have behaved at least unethically, but may also have violated the California Online Privacy Protection Act and perhaps the FTC Code of Fair Information Practices.

Meanwhile the point is well taken that it is highly inappropriate for a professor, protected by tenure, to be outing law students and junior lawyers or threatening to do so as a way to shut them up.

I think this forum needs to address the question of leaks to Leiter – did they happen, who did it, will they happen again.

["Aduren" is Brian Leiter's Pseudonym]

Professor Filler,

Today we learned that someone on this blog shared posters' IP addresses with Brian Leiter (see links provided by poster above). This sharing of information led to several documented incidents of cyberstalking, presumably by Professor Leiter.

Given the sensitivity of personal information contained in some comments on this blog (e.g. the "VAP Trap" post with 150+ comments), I think the moderators owe a full accounting to posters about what happened.

Dan Filler, the eyes of the Legal Blogosphere are upon you...

[Lois Turner]

The above comments really do deserve a substantive response, for reasons that can be read here.

http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2013/03/whats-going-on-in-the-faculty-lounge#more-40592

[john]

So Leiter has been posting anonymously all over the internet -- hilarious. I knew he was tokyorose on autoadmit way back when, and now it seems he has been posting as Aduren. Any others?

But to the more serious point, the allegations of information sharing need to be addressed.

[marion]

Sources suggest he was also "PhiloStudent" on top-law-schools.com, where he got into arguments about the prestige of philosophy programs and over defending Brian Leiter, as well as "Philosophy Junkie" on wikipedia.

[marion]

(As "Philosophy Junkie" he vigorously praised the Leiter ranking system)