UCLA Law Dean Resigns Position

Jonathan D. Varat, dean of the UCLA School of Law since 1998, has resigned and will return to full-time teaching.

Varat, 57, a constitutional law scholar on the UCLA law faculty since 1976, announced his resignation in an e-mail message to colleagues last month, shortly after a routine university review of his five years as dean.

“The review included gratifying praise by many and blunt reservations by some,” he wrote.

He did not specify what the reservations were or who voiced them but suggested that the review led to his resignation as dean.

”... I believe the ... enthusiasm for all we have accomplished ought to come reasonably close to matching my own,” he said.

University officials said this week that Varat was vacationing and unavailable for comment.

In a written statement, UCLA Chancellor Albert Carnesale expressed “deep appreciation” for Varat’s service and “his continuing contributions” to the law school and university.

An interim dean will be appointed in September while the university conducts a national search for Varat’s successor at the law school, which is considered to be among the nation’s best.

U.S. News and World Report magazine placed the law school 16th in its most recent ranking.

Law professor David Sklansky said Varat “greatly enriched the intellectual life” of the law school.

In addition to raising funds and hiring new faculty, Sklansky said, Varat’s accomplishments included establishing a think tank dedicated to studying sexual orientation law and public policy.

Varat also strengthened the environmental law program and promoted the study of the relationship of race and the law, Sklansky said.

In his e-mail to colleagues, Varat cited 10 achievements during his tenure as dean. Among them were recruiting diverse students, initiating new lectures and conferences and keeping the law school financially sound through strong fund-raising.

While he was dean, Varat continued to teach a constitutional law course and a course on the federal courts.

An Army veteran, he received both his law and undergraduate degrees from the University of Pennsylvania. He clerked in the U.S. Court of Appeals and in the U.S. Supreme Court for Justice Byron White. He also worked for two years as a litigator for L.A.-based O’Melveny & Myers.