Michigan State University College of Law

Detroit College of Law

Detroit College of Law opened in 1891 with 69 students and was incorporated in 1893. Among the first class of students to graduate were a future circuit judge and an ambassador. It was the oldest continuously operating independent law school in the United States until it was assimilated by MSU in 1995. The college was affiliated with the Detroit Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA).

In 1937, the school broke ground and relocated to a new building at 130 East Elizabeth Street in Detroit, where it stayed until 1997. The Building was designed by architect George DeWitt Mason. It had been located at the former Detroit College of Medicine building on St. Antoine Street from 1892 to 1913; and the Detroit "YMCA" building from 1913 to 1924; the ground on which the building stood was under a 99-year lease from the YMCA. The last location of the Detroit College of Law in Downtown Detroit is commemorated by a plaque at Comerica Park, the home stadium of the Detroit Tigers baseball team, which now occupies the site.

Affiliation with Michigan State University

The college became affiliated with Michigan State University in 1995. It relocated to East Lansing in 1997, when its 99-year lease with the Detroit YMCA expired, and the original building was demolished to make way for Comerica Park. The newly located college was called "Detroit College of Law at Michigan State University". In April 2004, the school changed its name to the MSU College of Law, becoming more closely aligned academically with MSU. MSU Law is currently fully integrated as a constituent college of the university: academically, financially, and structurally.

Joan Howarth began her deanship at Michigan State University College of Law on July 1, 2008 and was the first female dean in MSU Law's 117-year history. Beforehand, she was a professor at the William S. Boyd School of Law at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, since 2001. She retired at the end of the 2015-16 school year. Lawrence Ponoroff became the Dean in the fall of 2016, and he served in that role until the end of December 2019. On October 26, 2018, MSU's board of directors voted to fully integrate the College of Law into the university, thereby completing its transition from a private, independent institution to a public law school. The full integration was undertaken in order to facilitate collaboration between the law school and other divisions of MSU.

Melanie B. Jacobs, professor of law, was then appointed as the law college's interim dean, beginning in January 2020 and under her tenure, the integration of the College of Law into the university was completed on August 17, 2020. On June 1, 2021, Linda Sheryl Greene became Dean and MSU Foundation Professor of Law, and was the Inaugural Dean of the College of Law. Dean Greene (a leading scholar in sports law) was previously the Evjue-Bascom Professor of Law at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Dean Greene stepped down as dean in January 2024, since which time Michael Sant'Ambrogio has served as interim dean.