Stuart L. Deutsch served as dean of Rutgers School of Law-Newark from 1999 until July 2009, when he stepped down and was awarded the title University Professor. He received his J.D. from Yale Law School in 1969 and his LL.M. from Harvard Law School in 1974, where he was a Fellow in Law and the Humanities. He is a 1966 graduate of the University of Michigan.

Professor Deutsch is a member of several committees concerning the legal profession, ethics, diversity, and legal education, including the New Jersey Supreme Court's Commission on Professionalism; the New Jersey Institute for Continuing Legal Education; and the American Bar Association's (ABA) Section of Legal Education and Admission to the Bar Questionnaire Committee. He has worked with the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar Technology Committee; the ABA's Central and Eastern European Law Initiative; the Association of American Law Schools Membership Committee; the World Conservation Union's Commission on Environmental Law; and advisory committees to reform the housing and eviction courts. He also has been chair of the Environmental Law and Local Government Law Sections of the Association of American Law Schools.

Professor Deutsch has served on the board of directors of several environmental organizations, as a hearing officer for the Chicago Commission on Human Relations, and as chair of fair housing and housing development organizations. He was a pro bono attorney for the Leadership Council for Metropolitan Open Communities, the umbrella fair housing organization in the Chicago metropolitan area.

Formerly a professor of law, codirector of the Program in Environmental and Energy Law, and founding director of the Institute for Science, Law, and Technology at the Chicago-Kent College of Law at the Illinois Institute of Technology, he also served as interim dean in 1996-97, and as associate dean for academic affairs and associate dean for interdisciplinary programs. Professor Deutsch's expertise is in the fields of environmental law, land use, and urban development. He is the author of Deutsch's Illinois Environmental Laws Annotated and for 18 years was coeditor of Land Use and Environment Law Review. Professor Deutsch has also been a visiting faculty member at the University of Illinois College of Law; an associate professor at the University of Santa Clara School of Law, where he began his teaching career; and practiced law in New York City.