J.D., Harvard Law School
B.A., Colgate University

Robert M. Ackerman was named the 10th dean of Wayne State University Law School, effective May 13, 2008. Ackerman came to Wayne Law from Penn State University's Dickinson School of Law, where he taught torts, dispute resolution, conflict resolution theory, negotiation and mediation. He also served as director of the Center for Dispute Resolution, at the time the nation’s seventh-ranked law school dispute resolution program.

A cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School and magna cum laude graduate of Colgate University, Ackerman served as dean and professor of law at Willamette University College of Law from July 1996 to May 1999. While dean, the law school experienced a 60 percent increase in financial aid to law students, a revitalization of the alumni organization and annual giving, enhanced visibility of the Center for Dispute Resolution and Law and Government program, and an increase in the diversity of the faculty and student body.

Ackerman has lectured at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, the University of Vienna School of Law, the Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine, and Leicester Polytechnic School of Law (now deMontfort University). He has also been employed by the Denver firm of Holme Roberts & Owen and the Harvard Prison Legal Assistance Project.

He has written extensively in the fields of torts, dispute resolution, communitarian theory and civic responsibility, and his scholarship has appeared in a wide variety of high profile publications. His essay, "Taking Responsibility," was a winner of the international Communitarian Essay Contest and was published in the German social science journal Leviathan. His co-authored book (with Robert F. Cochran Jr.) titled “Law and Community: The Case of Torts,” was published early in 2004.

Ackerman is an active participant in professional groups related to conflict resolution, and recently completed a term as chair of the AALS Section on Law and Communitarian Studies. A founding member of Mediators Beyond Borders, he has worked on development projects in Tanzania with Penn State's InterInstitutional Consortium for Indigenous Knowledge.

In his first year at Wayne Law, Ackerman encouraged an expansion of clinical programs and helped establish the Damon J. Keith Center for Civil Rights, the Program in International and Comparative Law, and the Public Interest Law Fellowships.  He teaches courses in torts and dispute resolution. Ackerman also serves as Wayne State's Faculty Athletics Representative.

“Verantwortung ubernehmen” Leviathan, 2007 (German translation of “Taking Responsibility”).

“Vanishing Trial, Vanishing Community?” Journal of Dispute Resolution, 2006.

“The September 11 Victim Compensation Fund: An Administrative Response to National Tragedy,” Harvard Negotiation Law Review, 2005.

Law and Community: The Case of Torts, with Robert F. Cochran Jr., Rowman & Littlefield, 2004.

"Disputing Together: Conflict Resolution and the Search for Community," Ohio State Journal on Dispute Resolution, 2002.

“Tort Law and Federalism: Whatever Happened to Devolution?” Yale Law and Policy Review, Yale Journal on Regulation (Joint Symposium Issue), 1996.

“Tort Law and Communitarianism: Where Rights Meet Responsibilities," originally published in Wake Forest Law Review, 1995, revised and republished in To Promote The General Welfare: A Communitarian Legal Reader 1999.

“Defamation and Alternative Dispute Resolution: Healing the Sting,” Missouri Journal of Dispute Resolution, 1986.

“The Seat Belt Defense Reconsidered: A Return to Accountability in Tort Law?” New Mexico Law Review, 1986.