Oh, the places sentencing can take you!

Though I can only do a very pale imitation of the masterpiece, the New York Times puts me in a Seussical mood with this terrific profile of my co-author and friend who is now Dean Nora Demleitner.  So here goes:

Congratulations!

Today is your day!

You’re off to great places!

You’re off and away!

__

So, pack your sentencing ideas

and get ready to leave.

The reforms that are needed

I’m sure you will achieve.

I stress these themes because the NYT piece not only highlights Nora's sentencing expertise, but also highlights that this expertise helped forge her connection to her old boss, Justice Alito:

She made her way to the Hofstra Law School faculty in 2001, and on Jan. 1, Ms. Demleitner, 41, became the law school’s youngest dean ever and the first woman to fill the dean’s chair since the school was founded in 1970. She had served as interim dean since March, and her appointment concluded a national search that took almost a year.

Alan N. Resnick, one of six members of the law school faculty on the 13-member search committee, said Ms. Demleitner “has energized the school.” Hofstra and Touro are Long Island’s only law schools. “We were looking for someone who was not only highly regarded in the law school world, but someone who has vision,” he said. “We found a dean who sees where the future of legal education is going and who will help Hofstra retain and grow its excellent faculty.”

The search committee was not the only one impressed by Ms. Demleitner. Justice Alito, for whom she served as a clerk in 1992 and ’93, said he was, too.  “She had a wonderful academic record and came highly recommended to me by people at Yale Law School,” Justice Alito said in a telephone interview. “I was immediately impressed by her poise and intelligence.”

Ms. Demleitner was particularly eager to clerk for Justice Alito because they shared an interest in sentencing.  She later became a managing editor for the Federal Sentencing Reporter, a journal that explores sentencing law.

This seems like a particularly fitting day to spotlight Nora's breaking of barriers at Hofstra given that, as noted here, Martin Luther King was awarded doctor of law degrees from Hofstra University in 1965.