Will become the Fulbright and Jaworski Professor in Spring 2006
AUSTIN, Texas—Professor A. Mechele Dickerson will join The University of Texas School of Law as Visiting Professor for fall 2005 and as the Fulbright and Jaworski Professor beginning in spring 2006. She was previously the Cabell Research Professor of Law at William and Mary Law School where she received both the Walter L. Williams, Jr. Teaching Award and the Alumni Fellowship award.
"Mechele Dickerson is an excellent scholar and an award winning teacher in the field of commercial law," said Dean Bill Powers. "We are delighted to welcome her to Austin."
"Mechele is a very interesting and productive scholar in the prime of
her academic career," said Professor Jay Westbrook, one of the pre-eminent
bankruptcy scholars in the U.S. "I'm excited she's joining us."
"Mechele Dickerson is an extraordinary acquisition for us," said Professor
Ronald Mann, who also works on commercial empirical legal research. "Her
work on corporations and bankruptcy is in areas of great interest to our students
and alumni. We believe that she will step right in and be not only an influential
scholar but also a superlative classroom instructor."
"I'm excited to have the opportunity to work with such a distinguished
group of commercial law scholars and with legal scholars who are committed to
commercial empirical legal research. I'm looking forward to joining the UT-Austin
community and becoming an engaged member of the law school faculty," said
Professor Dickerson
Professor Dickerson’s research focuses on bankruptcy. Representative publications
include "Caught in the Trap: Pricing Racial Housing Preferences,"
103 MICHIGAN L. REV. 2005; "Race Matters in Bankruptcy," _ WASH. &
LEE. L. REV. 2005; and "Bankruptcy and Mortgage Lending: The Homeowner
Dilemma," _ JOHN MARSHALL L. REV. 2004. She is an elected member of the
influential American Law Institute (ALI) and works on the Consultative Group:
International Jurisdiction and Judgments Project; Principles and Rules of Transnational
Civil Procedure. Dickerson is on the editorial board of American Bankruptcy
Institute Law Review.
She graduated from Harvard Law School and cum laude from Harvard-Radcliffe
colleges. She clerked for the Hon. Nathaniel R. Jones, Sixth Circuit Court of
Appeals, and worked in the private sector for Shea & Gardner in Washington,
D.C., and Hunton & Williams of Norfolk, Virginia.
Professor Dickerson will join a faculty with a significant national presence
in bankruptcy law. Professor Jay Westbrook is one of the foremost authorities
on insolvency. He serves as a consultant to the International Monetary Fund
and the World Bank and has also served as the United States Reporter for the
ALI's Transnational Insolvency Project and as co-head of the United States delegation
to the UN (UNCITRAL) conference on international insolvency. Professor Ronald
Mann has written widely about secured credit and electronic commerce, with a
recent focus on the policy issues raised by the rise of credit cards. Professor
Teresa Sullivan won the 1990 Silver Gavel Award of the American Bar Association
for her co-authored study of consumer bankruptcy, As We Forgive Our Debtors:
Bankruptcy and Consumer Credit in America (Oxford, 1990) and her book Fragile
Middle Class (Yale, 2000), which she also co-authored with Elizabeth Warren
and Jay Westbrook, won the 2000 Writing Competition Award of the American college
of Consumer Financial Services Lawyers.
UT Law also has one of the United States’ top corporate and commercial law faculties. Tenure and tenure-track professors whose research portfolio is primarily in these two fields include Bernard Black, Loftus Carson, Jens Damann, Henry Hu, Emily Kadens, Kate Litvak, Ronald Mann, Michael Sturley, Jay Westbrook, and Zipporah Wiseman. A full list of UT Law's nationally ranked and distinguished commercial and corporate law professors is available at: http://www.utexas.edu/law/academics/centers/clbe/faculty.html.