Richard A. Bierschbach is Interim President of Wayne State University, appointed September 17, 2025. Interim President Bierschbach is responsible for guiding the university as the WSU Board of Governors conducts a national search to identify and appoint the university’s next permanent president. Bierschbach accepted this role following an eight-year tenure as Dean of the Wayne State Law School, where he proved to be a strong, trusted and transformational leader.
Bierschbach is an accomplished scholar and educator whose expertise lies in criminal law and procedure. His research examines the ways in which the institutional and procedural structure of the criminal justice system interacts with its broader substantive and regulatory goals. His work has been published in many of the nation’s leading law journals, including the Yale Law Journal, the Michigan Law Review, the Virginia Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, the Northwestern University Law Review and the Georgetown Law Journal, among others. While serving as Vice Dean and professor at Yeshiva University’s Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York, he twice received the Best Professor Award from the graduating class.
Before joining the academy, Bierschbach clerked for Judge A. Raymond Randolph of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (1997–98) and Justice Sandra Day O’Connor of the U.S. Supreme Court (2000–01). Between those clerkships, he was a Bristow Fellow in the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of the Solicitor General and an Attorney-Advisor in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel. He also practiced law in the New York offices of Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering (now WilmerHale), Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, and Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, where he focused on Supreme Court and appellate litigation.
Bierschbach earned his bachelor’s degree in history (summa cum laude) from the University of Michigan in 1994 and his law degree from the University of Michigan Law School in 1997. He graduated first in his class and was awarded the Daniel H. Grady Prize and the Henry M. Bates Award, the law school’s highest honor. He has served in leadership roles within the American Bar Association, is an elected member of the American Law Institute, and is a Life Fellow of the American Bar Foundation.
