It’s been rumored for a few weeks that Yale law professor Robert Post would get the nod to replace Harold Koh as dean of the law school after Koh was tapped to become a lawyer for the State Department.

Now it’s happened. Post, the David Boies Professor of Law at Yale, in an announcement made by Yale’s president, Richard Levin, was named the new law dean. According to his bio, Post (Harvard, Yale Law, Harvard Ph.D), taught at Berkeley’s law school — his areas of expertise include “constitutional law, First Amendment, legal history, and affirmative action.”

Levin, in his letter, wrote:

It gives me great pleasure to announce the appointment of Robert C. Post ‘77JD as the Dean and Sol and Lillian Goldman Professor of Law, effective July 1, 2009. . . .

Professor Post earned both a BA (summa cum laude) and a Ph.D. (History of American Civilization) from Harvard, but between the two he received his law degree at Yale, where he was Note Editor of the Yale Law Journal and won the Michael Egger Prize. Immediately after graduating, he served as a Law Clerk to Chief Judge David L. Bazelon, United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, following that year with a clerkship for Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. of the United States Supreme Court. He worked for nearly three years as an Associate at Williams & Connolly, and, in January 1983 moved to California to become Acting Professor of Law at Boalt Hall, University of California, Berkeley. He remained at Boalt Hall for twenty years, serving for the last nine years as the Alexander F. and May T. Morrison Professor of Law.

Robert has written and edited numerous books, including the most recent with Matthew M. Finkin, For the Common Good: Principles of American Academic Freedom (Yale University Press, 2009). Two others are Prejudicial Appearances: The Logic of American Antidiscrimination Law (with K. Anthony Appiah, Judith Butler, Thomas C. Grey, and Reva Siegel, 2001), and Constitutional Domains: Democracy, Community, Management (1995). He also has authored dozens of articles that have appeared in legal journals and other publications, including “Roe Rage: Democratic Constitutionalism and Backlash,” with Reva Siegel (Harvard Civil-Rights Civil-Liberties Law Review, 2007), “Federalism, Positive Law, and the Emergence of the American Administrative State: Prohibition in the Taft Court Era” (William & Mary Law Review, 2006), “Foreword: Fashioning the Legal Constitution: Culture, Courts, and Law” (Harvard Law Review, 2003), and “Subsidized Speech” (Yale Law Journal, 1996). Professor Post received the 1998 Hughes-Gossett Award for best article in the Journal of Supreme Court History.

. . .

I know the entire Law School community will join me in welcoming Professor Post to his new position.

Robert C. Post, Yale Law School courtyard in the background. (Photos: Harold Shapiro and Michael Marsland)

New Haven, Conn. — Yale University President Richard Levin announced today the appointment of Robert C. Post ’77 J.D. as Dean and Sol and Lillian Goldman Professor of Law at Yale Law School. Post joined the Yale Law School faculty in 2003 as David Boies Professor of Law, specializing in the area of constitutional law, including the First Amendment, equal protection, and legal history. He will assume his duties as dean on July 1, 2009.

Post becomes the sixteenth dean of Yale Law School, succeeding Harold Hongju Koh, who became dean of Yale Law School in 2004 and who awaits Senate confirmation as Legal Adviser to the U.S. State Department. Kate Stith, Lafayette S. Foster Professor of Law, has served as the Law School’s acting dean since March.

Robert C. Post ?77 J.D. Named Dean of Yale Law School