Dean Garry W. Jenkins

Garry Jenkins

  • Former Dean

Degrees

  • Haverford College, B.A.
  • Harvard University, M.P.P.
  • Harvard University, J.D.

Expertise

  • Business Law
  • Corporate Governance
  • Law & Leadership
  • Nonprofit Organizations

Garry W. Jenkins was the dean and William S. Pattee Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota Law School from 2016-2023. Prior to assuming his post as the Law School’s 11th dean, he was associate dean for academic affairs and John C. Elam/Vorys Sater Professor of Law at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law, where he was also director of the Program on Law and Leadership, a leadership education and development initiative that he co-founded.

Dean Jenkins’s research and teaching interests are in law and philanthropy, leadership studies, corporate governance, and civil rights law. His scholarly articles have been published in leading law reviews and interdisciplinary journals.  He has received honors and awards for both his academic scholarship (including recognition in three different subfields: nonprofit law, global justice, and corporate law) and his administrative academic leadership.

Before entering academia, Jenkins was chief operating officer and general counsel of the Goldman Sachs Foundation, a $200 million-plus international corporate foundation. Prior to joining Goldman Sachs, he was an attorney with the New York law firm of Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, where he counseled public charities and private foundations, formed and advised private investment funds, and negotiated mergers and acquisitions.

He earned a B.A. from Haverford College, a master’s degree in public policy from the Harvard Kennedy School, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School, where he served as editor-in-chief of the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review. Upon graduation, he clerked for Judge Timothy K. Lewis of the United States Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit.

Dean Jenkins sits on the governing boards of Haverford College, the Law School Admission Council, the National Women’s Law Center, Equal Justice Works, and the Guthrie Theater. He also chairs the deans’ steering committee of the Association of American Law Schools. By gubernatorial appointment, he currently serves as one of Minnesota’s commissioners to the Uniform Law Commission.

Books

Beyond Imagination?: The January 6 Insurrection (West Academic, 2022) (with Mark C. Alexander et al.)

Journal Articles

Leadership Evolution: The Rise of Lawyers in the C-Suite, 96 Tulane Law Review 695 (2022)
(with
Jon J. Lee
)
Educating Lawyer-Leaders: The Mechanics and Artistry of Case Study Teaching and Discussion Leadership, 83 Tennessee Law Review 729 (2016)
The Wall Street Takeover of Nonprofit Boards, 13 Stanford Social Innovation Review 46 (Summer 2015)
Nongovernmental Organizations and the Forces Against Them: Lessons of the Anti- NGO Movement, 37 Brooklyn Journal of International Law 459 (2012)
Who’s Afraid of Philanthrocapitalism?, 61 Case Western Reserve Law Review 753 (2011)
Incorporation Choice, Uniformity and the Reform of Nonprofit State Law, 41 Georgia Law Review 1113 (2007), reprinted in 50 Corporate Practice Commentator 193 (2008)
Soft Power, Strategic Security, and International Philanthropy, 85 North Carolina Law Review 773 (2007), reprinted in Top Ten Global Justice Law Review Articles of 2007 (Oxford University Press, 2008)
The Powerful Possibilities of Nonprofit Mergers: Supporting Strategic Consolidation through Law and Public Policy, 74 Southern California Law Review 1089 (2001)

Editorials, Commentary & Letters

To Achieve Justice, We Need New Legislation, New Policies, New Training, New Organizational Cultures, MinnPost, June 1, 2020 (op-ed)
(with
Laura L. Bloomberg
)

Other Publications

Introduction: A Festschrift for Professor Martha Chamallas, 83 Ohio State Law Journal 423 (2022)
Remembrance of Hon. Walter F. Mondale '56, 106 Minnesota Law Review 1 (2021)
On the Leadership Track, Bloomberg Law Reports (Student Edition), Sept. 2011 (Vol. 2, No. 3), at 18
Preface to Symposium Addresses: Reason, Passion & the Progress of Law, 33 Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review 313 (1998)
(with
Amy E. McManus
)