Associate Dean for the Auburn Hills campus, and Professor
B.A. Denison University 1973
J.D. University of Michigan 1976

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Dean Nussbaumer is a professor at Thomas M. Cooley Law School and the Associate Dean in charge of Cooley’s Auburn Hills branch campus. He is a 1976 honors graduate of the University of Michigan Law School. Before joining the Thomas Cooley faculty in 1984, he served as a law clerk to former Michigan Supreme Court Chief Justice Mary S. Coleman, and as an assistant public defender for the State Appellate Defender Office. While at the Appellate Defender Office, he successfully argued cases before the Michigan Court of Appeals, the Michigan Supreme Court, the Sixth Federal Circuit Court of Appeals, and the United States Supreme Court. He served as Co-Reporter for the first edition of the Sixth Circuit Pattern Federal Criminal Jury Instructions, and he currently serves as a gubernatorial appointee to the Michigan Appellate Defender Commission and as a Michigan Supreme Court appointee to the Michigan Criminal Procedure Rules Committee.

Dean Nussbaumer is a member of the ABA Section of Legal Education’s Diversity Committee and a member of the National Bar Association’s Law Professors Division. He has written extensively on the subject of misuse and over-reliance on the LSAT in law school admissions and accreditation practices, including Misuse of the Law School Admissions Test, Racial Discrimination, and the De Facto Quota System for Restricting African-American Access to the Legal Profession, 80 St. John’s Law Review 167 (Winter 2006), and The Disturbing Correlation Between ABA Accreditation Review and Declining African-American Law School Enrollment, 80 St. John’s Law Review 991 (Summer 2006).

Dean Nussbaumer has presented his research findings on this subject at the National Bar Association’s 2006 and 2007 National Conventions. He was also invited by Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones to speak on this subject at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s Annual Legislative Conference in September 2007, and by the American Constitution Society to speak at the National Press Club in November 2007.

At the National Bar Association’s 2007 National Convention, he received the NBA’s Presidential Award from outgoing NBA President Linnes Finney, Jr., for outstanding service and dedication to the organization. In June 2008, the ABA Council of Legal Education Opportunity selected him for its Legacy Justice Academia Achievement Award for Commitment to Diversity in the Legal Profession.

Bibliography

• Books and Chapters in Books
• Articles
• Book Reviews and Other Short Works
• Other Writings

Presentations