Appointments Voting Procedure

Faculty Appointments Voting Procedure

(as amended through March 2, 2000*) (View original pdf document)

The following is the procedure that has been adopted for presentation of the Faculty Appointments Committee report and for voting by the full Faculty on the matter of faculty appointments.

At the full faculty meeting at which appointments are to be made, the chairperson of the Faculty Appointments Committee shall report on the recommendations of the Committee. At the option of the Committee, the positions to be filled may be treated as mutually exclusive, (such as a law librarian or an expert in a certain area), in which event each position will be dealt with separately, or may be treated together, in which event a slate filling the number of vacancies available will be presented. The report of the chairperson of the Faculty Appointments Committee shall elaborate on the Committee’s reasons for recommending the appointment and for its rank ordering of the recommended candidates and alternates, as well as the reasons why other candidates who were interviewed at the Law School but did not receive the approval of the Appointments Committee.

After presentation and discussion a ballot will be circulated for each position or for the slate of candidates. In each event the ballot will list the names of all candidates recommended by the Faculty Appointments Committee in ranked order as well as those candidates who were interviewed at the Law School but who were not recommended by the Committee. Prior to voting, any member of the faculty may move that a non- approved candidate be moved onto the “approved” list, in which event that candidate will be eligible for appointment. The affinnative vote of 40% of the faculty members present and voting is necessary to make a candidate eligible for appointment. That vote is taken by a show of hands rather than secret ballot.

Once the final list of eligible candidates for each position or on the overall slate is concluded, faculty members vote for as many candidates as there are positions being filled at a given time. (For example, if there are three positions being filled off a slate, a faculty member may vote for three separate candidates on the ballot. On the other hand, if we are voting for a single opening, a faculty member may only vote for one candidate on each round of balloting.)

Any candidate or candidates who receive the affirmative vote of 60% or more of the faculty members present and voting is appointed. If no candidate receives the necessary votes, that candidate receiving the lowest amount of votes is dropped from the ballot and a second or subsequent rounds of voting take place. (No candidate is dropped from the bottom after any round of voting in which an appointment is made.)

On at least one instance in the past when no candidate received the required 60% vote, the chair of the meeting exercised his discretion and ruled that the final round of balloting was a “yes” or “no” approval for a single candidate.

The same procedure as set forth above is used for the purpose of voting for alternate slots. That is, once the appointments are made, alternates are treated as if they are filling vacancies in the same manner.

A candidate for appointment to the Faculty as a visiting** professor for an initial one-semester or two-semester term shall be presented by the Faculty Appointments Committee to the Faculty for approval in the same manner as that set forth above for all candidates, except that such a visitor candidate may be recommended by the Faculty Appointments Committee to the Faculty for approval without holding a full Faculty interview for such candidate at the Law School.

If any candidate so approved by the Faculty for an initial visitorship is considered at a later time for an additional visitorship or for a tenure-track appointment, such later consideration shall be conducted in the usual manner, including a full Faculty interview at the Law School.

*A thorough search of the archives of the law faculty meeting minutes was unable to find evidence that this policy, as amended through March 2, 2000, was voted on and adopted by the faculty.

**The minutes of the February 22, 1999 faculty meeting clarify that this reference applies to look-see visitors only and not to visitors who might be brought in to cover the classes of regular faculty members who are away on leave.