Hofstra law dean to leave for Va. school

Nora Demleitner, dean of Hofstra's law school, is leaving the Hempstead-based campus to assume the same role at Washington and Lee University in Virginia, officials said.

In July, Demleitner, 45, who has been dean at Hofstra since January 2008, will be the first woman to head the 145-year-old law school based in Lexington.

When she was appointed to the top post at Hofstra's Maurice A. Deane School of Law, Demleitner was the first woman to fill the position and the youngest since the school's founding in 1970, according to a New York Times profile at the time.

"Dean Demleitner emerged from what we believe was an extraordinarily strong pool of candidates," Washington and Lee president Kenneth P. Ruscio stated on his university's website. "Everyone who met with her was impressed with her energy and enthusiasm and vision. In addition, she has a splendid reputation throughout the legal community for her scholarship and accomplishments."

Demleitner could not be reached for comment. Washington and Lee's website quoted her as saying, "I am deeply honored to have been chosen as Washington and Lee's next law dean. Its faculty and student body impressed me immensely during my visit."

She has been on the Hofstra faculty since 2001 and has taught criminal and immigration law and human rights. A native of Germany, she is a Yale Law School graduate who was clerk for Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito when he was on the Third Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals in Newark.

She holds a master of laws degree from Georgetown Law Center and a bachelor's degree from Bates College.

Her legal academic career began in 1994 when she joined the faculty at St. Mary's University School of Law in San Antonio, Texas, and was director of master of laws programs.