The Youngest Woman to Ever Lead a U.S. Law School

Jocelyn Benson is the 11th dean of the Wayne State University Law School in Detroit, Michigan. She has been interim dean since 2012. Wayne State University’s research finds that at age 36, Benson is the youngest woman to ever lead a U.S. law school. She is the second woman to lead the Wayne State University Law School.

Dean Benson joined the faculty at the law school in 2005. In addition to her teaching duties, she was the associate director of the Damon J. Keith Center for Civil Rights. She is the author of State Secretaries of State: Guardians of the Democratic Process (Ashgate Publishing, 2010). Earlier in her career she was a law clerk for a U.S. Appeals Court judge, a legal assistant at National Public Radio, and a hate crimes investigator for the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Dean Benson is a graduate of Wellesley College in Massachusetts and Harvard Law School. She also holds a master’s degree from the University of Oxford in England.