de Toqueville and the Dean

This is my latest installment in a series of posts, aiming to help faculty understand their deans better. Lately I've been reading Leo Damrosch's new book, Tocqueville's Discovery of America. It's not a profound re-interpretation of de Tocqueville's work, but the biographical background does help me appreciate the work more fully.  And it does make me think about healthy law school society.

Think of the faculty as the polity -- the entrepreneurs and members of voluntary associations and others who make a society into whatever it is, for good or for bad. Think of the dean as government -- there to handle collective action problems and other market failures.  Or in the law school context, the dean is there to respond to faculty failure. There are certain things that only a dean can accomplish, but healthy law schools typically have faculty who build their own social capital without involving the dean.  As de Tocqueville says, a functioning democracy depends more on privately-based social institutions and attitudes than it does on enacted laws.

Do you recognize that your colleagues need to understand more about the IRB to further their research?  You don't need a dean to organize a presentation for your colleagues.  Do you believe that students need some guidance on the selection of courses in the corporate and business law curriculum?  You could declare a date for a presentation and advertise it through student groups. 

Sometimes the best thing you can do for a dean is to ignore her as you go about the business of creating healthy private associations in a law school.