Sixteen faculty at DePaul’s College of Law have sent a letter to the American Bar Association, complaining that the school violated the ABA’s rules when it picked an interim dean last month without consulting with faculty.

DePaul’s administration removed former Dean Glen Weissenberger last month (he is staying on as a professor, at least at this point).

School officials have said the ouster was in the works for several months because of growing disagreements between Weissenberger and the administration. Some faculty members say Weissenberger was fired after complaining to the ABA that DePaul was taking too large a share of the tuition the law school brought in.

Glen Weissenberger

After Weissenberger was removed from the post, top DePaul officials named state appellate court Judge Warren Wolfson to be the interim dean. That decision is what some faculty are now angry at, as first reported in the widely read TaxProf Blog earlier this week.

In their letter (a purported copy of which is here), the 16 faculty say that they should have been consulted first, per the ABA’s rules. Whether the ABA will actually hand down any kind of sanction or step in on the matter is another issue.

So far, the controversy’s effect on students has remained unclear. Is teaching quality going to decline? Will future applicants be weaker candidates? Will graduates have a harder time getting jobs at top law firms? Or is this more a political issue, a conflict between faculty and administration, writ large?