Wade H. McCree, Jr., the U.S. solicitor general for the past three and a half years, has been named to the faculty of U-M Law School.

U-M law Dean Terrance Sandalow said McCree will formally join the faculty in the fall, 1981. The dean said McCree's teaching schedule will lean heavily on his background as judge and solicitor general.

"McCree is one of the nation's most distinguished lawyers," said Sandalow. "Because of his experience, he will serve as an important resource for students. His background makes him unique-there is simply no one else in the country who has his experience."

McCree, 60, was appointed to the solicitor general's post in 1977 by President Jimmy Carter. He stepped down from the post after Carter was succeeded in office by Ronald Reagan.

A practicing lawyer in Detroit from 1948 to 1952, McCree was appointed by Gov. G. Mennen Williams to the Wayne County Circuit Court in 1954, making him the first black man to sit on a Michigan court of record.

In 1961, after winning re-election, McCree was appointed to the U.S. District Court for the eastern district of Michigan by President John F. Kennedy; and in 1966, President Lyndon Johnson appointed him to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.

As the U.S. solicitor general, McCree was the nation's top lawyer, formulating and sometimes arguing the government's position in court cases and deciding which cases were to be appealed. Much of his work has been before the U.S. Supreme Court, where he has argued some 25 cases in three and a half years.

Born in Des Moines, Iowa, on July 3, 1920, McCree is a graduate of Fisk University and received a law degree from Harvard Law School. He has received honorary degrees from many institutions, including an honorary Doctor of Laws from the U-M in 1971.

He served four years in the U.S. Army during World War II and was awarded the Combat Infantry Badge and the Bronze Star. In 1956, he was a U.S. delegate to the Third United Nations Congress on the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders, which was held in Stockholm, Sweden.

McCree has served as an adjunct faculty member at Wayne State University Law School, the University of Detroit Law School, and as a law faculty member at the Salburg Seminar in American Studies, and Indiana University summer school.

He is a fellow of the American Bar Foundation, a member of the board of directors of the National Judicial College, a former director of the American Judicature Society, and was a member of the initial board of the Federal Judicial Center.

He is a member of the American Bar Association's Standing Committee on Judicial Selection, Tenure and Compensation, and the Lawyers' Conference Committee on the Federal Courts and Judiciary.

McCree is married to the former Dores M. McCrary and has two daughters, a son, and a grandson.

-- From the University of Michigan Law School's Law Quadrangle Notes, V. 25, Iss. 03 (Spring 1981).