DETROIT—The University of Detroit Mercy has appointed Phyllis L. Crocker as the new dean of the school of law.
Crocker joins UDM from Cleveland-Marshall College of Law, Cleveland State University, where she is a professor of law and recently served as interim dean and associate dean for academic affairs.
Professor Crocker has written extensively on the constitutional, historical, and cultural underpinnings of capital punishment, and she has served on many advisory committees as a nationally recognized authority on the death penalty. She chaired the American Bar Association Ohio Death Penalty Assessment Team that published Evaluating Fairness and Accuracy in State Death Penalty Systems: The Ohio Death Penalty Assessment Report.
She was named to the steering committee of the ABA Death Penalty Due Process Review Project. She was also appointed to the Ohio Supreme Court and Ohio State Bar Association Joint Task Force to Review the Administration of Ohio’s Death Penalty. She also serves her community as a Commissioner on the Cuyahoga County Public Defender Commission and as a member of the Board of Directors of the Cleveland Rape Crisis Center.
She has received several prestigious awards, most recently the 2010 YWCA Women of Professional Excellence Award and the Cleveland State University Administrative Merit Recognition Award. She is a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation and the Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Foundation and is admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Crocker received her B.A. from Yale University and her J.D. from Northeastern University School of Law.
