Temple University has announced the appointment of Rachel Rebouché as Dean of Temple Law School. Rebouché, who also serves as the James E. Beasley Professor of Law and a Faculty Fellow at the Center for Public Health Law Research, had acted as interim dean since August 2021.
Rebouché’s stewardship of the law school as interim dean was forward-looking, hands-on, and produced significant results. Working with the law school’s development team, she facilitated funding for classroom renovations, a faculty chair, and significant gifts and pledges for new student scholarships, bar preparation costs, and post-graduation financial support.
Together with the law school’s DEI Liaison, Associate Dean Donald Harris, Rebouché re-convened the Dean’s Advisory Council on Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion to strengthen the school’s commitments to social and racial justice as well as to an inclusive environment for students, staff, and faculty. She also worked with Harris and Assistant Dean for Students Jennifer Bretschneider to draft a survey to assess students’ wellness needs and to create a program that will match students with mentors to support their professional development.
Under Rebouché’s leadership, the school hired four new entry-level faculty members and a new Director of the Law Library. Her aim has been to advance the mission of the law school by understanding and responding to the needs of its people – faculty, staff, and students. “Temple Law School can only succeed if we put our people in position to succeed,” she said. “That means prioritizing student success, measured both by well-being and bar passage; faculty excellence, in which we both support and amplify faculty work and impact; and opportunities for staff to grow professionally and be recognized for their contributions to the law school.”
Rebouché looks forward to building on this momentum as Dean. Among her priorities are increasing student support from the moment they arrive through graduation; continuing to hire diverse and talented faculty; and bringing Temple Law voices and perspectives to national conversations. “Our faculty includes some of the foremost legal experts on issues of national significance,” she said. “Our students, likewise, have many opportunities to develop skills in policymaking and public advocacy, especially those who participate in our experiential curriculum. I’m excited to see this community of thinkers and doers take a greater role in national conversations.”
A leading expert on reproductive law, health law, and family law, Rebouché appears frequently in the news media on issues related to reproductive law. She has co-authored several op-eds for The New York Times, and her byline has also appeared in the Washington Post, USA Today, Rolling Stone, Politico, The Boston Globe, The Boston Review, The Hill and The Atlantic. She has been quoted in TIME Magazine, Vanity Fair, Fortune, The Boston Globe, The New York Times, The Christian Science Monitor, Bloomberg and countless other outlets. She has appeared on CNN, CBS, NBC and ABC National News, and she was featured in a sit-down interview for an episode of Full Frontal With Samantha Bee.
Rebouché is also an author or editor of several books. She is an author of Governance Feminism: An Introduction and an editor of Governance Feminism: Notes from the Field. She is also the editor of Feminist Judgments: Family Law Opinions Rewritten, published by Cambridge University Press, and an author of the sixth edition of the casebook, Family Law, with Professors Leslie Harris and June Carbone. In addition, she will serve as co-author for the contracts casebook, Contracts: Law in Action with Stewart Macaulay, William Whitford, Kathryn Hendley, and Jonathan Lipson and edited a collection of essays for Law & Contemporary Problems on the pandemic’s effects on issues in contract law.