A. Benjamin Spencer, a nationally recognized scholar of civil procedure and federal jurisdiction, became dean of William & Mary Law School in Williamsburg, Virginia, on July 1, 2020,^[1] and was awarded the Marshall-Wythe School of Law Trustee Professorship the following year. He is the first Black dean of any school at William & Mary.

Publications

Spencer is the author of multiple volumes of the renowned Wright & Miller Federal Practice & Procedure treatise, in addition to numerous articles published in journals including the Michigan Law Review, the Chicago Law Review and the UCLA Law Review.  He is one of the nation’s most-cited civil procedure scholars, with a widely used civil procedure casebook.

Military Service

At the age of 40, Spencer became a member of the U.S. Army Reserve Judge Advocate General’s Corps, serving in its Government Appellate Division as a captain.^[2]  In 2017, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts appointed him to the U.S. Judicial Conference Advisory Committee on Civil Rules.^[3]

Career

Prior to becoming Dean of William & Mary Law School, Spencer served on the faculty at the University of Virginia School of Law, first as the Earle K. Shawe Professor of Law (2014–2017), as a Professor of Law (2017-2018) and as the Justice Thurgood Marshall Distinguished Professor of Law (2018–2020).  During the 2019-2020 academic year, he was the Bennett Boskey Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School.

Spencer previously served as professor, associate dean for research and director of the Frances Lewis Law Center at Washington and Lee University School of Law. He is a member of the American Law Institute, a member of the West Academic Law School Advisory Board, and a member of the British Ambassador’s Advisory Council. He formerly served on the Virginia State Bar Council and has served as a special assistant U.S. attorney for the Western District of Virginia, occasionally handling appellate cases in the Fourth Circuit on behalf of the government on a pro bono basis.

Prior to joining the Washington and Lee faculty, Spencer was an associate professor of law at the University of Richmond School of Law. He also formerly worked as an associate in the law firm Shearman & Sterling and as a law clerk to Judge Judith W. Rogers of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. He visited Virginia Law during the 2011-2012 school year.

Education

Spencer holds a B.A. from Morehouse College, a J.D. from Harvard Law School and a master of science from the London School of Economics, where he was a Marshall Scholar.^[4]

In 2007, Spencer was awarded the Virginia State Council of Higher Education “Rising Star” award, given to the most promising junior faculty member among all academic fields at all colleges and universities in Virginia. He was the first law professor to receive this award.^[5]

In June, 2022, Spencer was honored with the William R. Rakes Leadership in Education Award from the Virginia State Bar (VSB) Section on the Education of Lawyers in Virginia. The award recognizes an individual who has demonstrated exceptional leadership and vision in developing and implementing innovative concepts to improve and enhance the state of legal education, and in advancing relationships and professionalism among members of the academy, the bench and the bar in Virginia.

Family history

Spencer comes from a long line of trailblazers. His father, James R. Spencer, was the first African American federal judge in Virginia and the first African American chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. His mother, Alicia Spencer, is a retired elementary school principal in Newport News.^[6] His grandfather, Dr. Adam S. Arnold, was the first African American professor at Notre Dame University.

References