By Steve Thorpe
Some would say that being a law school dean in 2014 is a roller coaster ride that would give Indiana Jones pause for thought. Phyllis Crocker says bring it on.
“I’ve always welcomed new challenges and adventures,” she says.
On Feb. 4, the University of Detroit Mercy announced the appointment of Crocker as the new dean of the School of Law, effective July 1.
Crocker says she believes UDM Law is well-positioned to weather the legal education storm, especially because of the school’s emphasis on real world for its students.
“Many law schools now say that their graduates are ready to practice, but I was impressed by what I believe is the most comprehensive program to do that here at UDM,” she says. “Most schools have one course, one clinic or externship. We start here in first year legal writing where you learn how to draft contracts. Then there’s legal writing throughout the curriculum.
“The law firm program here is also great because it develops a whole different set of skills in terms of teamwork, negotiation and working with clients. That combination is very exciting to me.”
Crocker joins UDM from Cleveland-Marshall College of Law, Cleveland State University, where she was a professor and served as associate dean for Academic Affairs from July 2006 to July 2010 and interim dean from March 2010 to June 2011. She led the law school through a university-wide budget reduction process and increased fundraising while also reforming the curriculum. She also pushed for completion of a technologically state-of-the-art trial courtroom at the school.
Crocker received her B.A. from Yale University in 1978 and her J.D. from Northeastern University School of Law in 1985. At Yale, she was awarded the Pearson Prize for “Best American Studies Senior Thesis.”
She clerked for U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Warren J. Ferguson, Ninth Circuit, and then was then an associate for three years in a Chicago law firm specializing in complex federal civil litigation, including civil rights and commercial class actions.
Crocker was attracted to UDM Law, at least in part, by its reputation for producing attorneys who want to make a difference.
“The law school has a commitment to public service and social justice and the university does as well, growing out of the Jesuit and Sisters of Mercy traditions,” she says. “That was very important to me in looking for a law school.”
Crocker credits her parents with fostering her a social conscience.
“My dad and mom instilled in all of us the importance of social change and individual commitment,” she says. “My mom was the first Methodist minister’s wife in the northern district of Illinois to have a paying job outside the home. That was unheard of at the time.”
Her childhood was almost that of a military brat because the family was constantly on the move.
“My dad was a Methodist minister,” she says. “We moved about every four years because the church believed in moving people around. Also, my dad got kicked out of a couple of churches because he was too liberal. He supported things like open housing. It was kind of like a military childhood, but without the great distances. My husband did grow up in a military family. When we moved to Cleveland it was 20 years ago and it’s now the longest either of us has lived in one town.”
The values she got from her parents made a law career a natural choice.
“I saw the law as a way to engage in social change, making justice more accessible,” she says.
In 1989 she became a staff attorney at the Texas Resource Center, a community defender organization that represented indigents on death row in their post-conviction appeals. While there, she served as co-counsel on Herrera v. Collins, a 1993 case before the U.S. Supreme Court involving capital punishment and the Eighth Amendment.
Crocker is now an acknowledged expert on death penalty law and has served on numerous advisory committees on the topic. She has frequently written on the constitutional, historical and cultural underpinnings of capital punishment.
“I developed my interest in the death penalty in law school,” she says. “I went to work at a place in Atlanta that is now called the Southern Center for Human Rights. They represent people on death row and do prison conditions litigation.”
Crocker moved on to other legal pursuits, but found herself drawn back to the issue.
“Later, I asked myself, ‘What did I do in law school that captured both my heart and head?’ I realized that it was the death penalty work,” she says. “The work was fulfilling on both those counts and it also allowed me to think about what I wanted to be and say as a law professor, because that was my long-term goal.”
Crocker chaired the American Bar Association Ohio Death Penalty Assessment Team that in 2007 published “Evaluating Fairness and Accuracy in State Death Penalty Systems: The Ohio Death Penalty Assessment Report.” She was named in 2010 to the Steering Committee of the ABA Death Penalty Due Process Review Project. In 2011, she was appointed to the Ohio Supreme Court and Ohio State Bar Association Joint Task Force to Review the Administration of Ohio’s Death Penalty.
“Michigan was the first English-speaking jurisdiction to abolish the death penalty,” she says. “It makes me very proud to now be a resident of Michigan.”
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