Background

Susan Kuo is a Professor at the University of South Carolina School of Law and serves as the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs. She is an affiliated researcher with the Hazards and Vulnerability Research Institute. Her research focuses on disaster law and social justice and has been published in law reviews including the Washington University Law Review, the Iowa Law Review, the Vanderbilt Law Review, the Boston College Law Review, the Indiana Law Journal, and the U.C. Davis Law Review.  Her article, Disaster Tradeoffs: The Doubtful Case for Public Necessity, received the 2014 Outstanding Faculty Publication award. She is a co-editor of The Cambridge Handbook of Disaster Law: Risk, Recovery and Redevelopment, under contract with Cambridge University Press.

Kuo holds the Class of 1969 Chair for Teaching Excellence. In 2014, she received the University of South Carolina Michael J. Mungo Graduate Teaching Award. In 2008, 2010, 2020, 2021, 2023, and 2025 she was voted Outstanding Faculty Member by the student body.  She was recognized as Best Classroom Teacher in 2014. Previously, she taught at Northern Illinois University College of Law and was voted Professor of the Year in 2000, 2002, 2005, and 2006. In 2013, Kuo was selected for inclusion in a study of “Best Law Teachers” along with 25 other law professors nationwide. The results of this study appear in the book, What the Best Law Teachers Do, published by the Harvard University Press. She is frequently invited to share her expertise on pedagogy, including how to address sensitive topics in the classroom, and she has led workshops on diversity and inclusion for judicial conferences, bar associations, law firms, law schools, student organizations, and businesses. 

Kuo earned her AB from Duke University and her JD from Vanderbilt Law School. Before entering academia, she was a Special Assistant United States Attorney with the United States Attorney’s Office in Atlanta, Georgia. She also completed two federal judicial clerkships, one with Judge Eugene E. Siler, Jr. of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and the other with Judge Robert H. Hall of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia. She has been a visiting professor at the University of Alabama School of Law and the University of Iowa College of Law.

Scholarship

Books

• The Cambridge Handbook of Disaster Law and Policy: Risk, Recovery, and Redevelopment (co-edited with John Travis Marshall and Ryan Max Rowberry) (2022).

Book Chapters

• Corporate Compliance and Climate Change, in The Cambridge Handbook of Disaster Law and Policy: Risk, Recovery, and Redevelopment (Susan Kuo, John Travis Marshall and Ryan Max Rowberry eds., 2022) (with Benjamin Means).
• The Uneasy Case for Disaster Buyouts, in Climate Disaster Law: Barriers and Opportunities (Rosemary Lyster and Robert R.M. Verchick eds., 2018).
• After the Storm: The Vulnerability and Resilience of Locally Owned Business, in Vulnerability: Reflections on a New Ethical Foundation for Law and Politics (Martha Albertson Fineman and Anna Grear eds., 2013) (with Benjamin Means).
• Chapter 8: Social Justice Implications of Internment Redress, in Eric K. Yamamoto et al., Race, Rights and Reparation: Law and the Japanese American Internment (2d ed. 2013).
• “Not Only Injurious to Individuals, but Dangerous to the State”: A Theory of Disaster Crime, in Disasters, Hazards, and Law (Mathieu Deflem ed., 2012).
• Preserving Public Peace, Protecting Private Property, in The Public Nature of Private Property (Michael Diamond and Robin Malloy eds., 2011).

Articles

• Forcing Climate Change Compliance, 48 Harv. Env't L. Rev. (2024) (with Benjamin Means).
• Navigating Neither, 56 U. Pac. L. Rev. 37 (2024). 
• Climate Change Compliance, 107 Iowa L. Rev. 2135 (2022) (with Benjamin Means).
• A Corporate Law Rationale for Reparations, 62 B.C. L. Rev. 799 (2021) (with Benjamin Means).
• The Political Economy of Corporate Exit, 71 Vand. L. Rev. 1293 (2018) (with Benjamin Means).
• Collective Coercion, 57 B.C. L. Rev. 1599 (2016) (with Benjamin Means).
• Disaster Tradeoffs: The Doubtful Case for Public Necessity, 54 B.C. L. Rev. 127 (2013).
• Corporate Social Responsibility After Disaster, 89 Wash. U. L. Rev. 973 (2012) (with Benjamin Means).
• Engaging the Legal Academy in Disaster Response, 10 Seattle J. Soc. Just. 211 (2011) (with Davida Finger, Laila Hlass, Anne Hornsby, and Rachel Van Cleave).
• Speaking in Tongues: Mandating Multilingual Disaster Warnings in the Public Interest, 14 Wash. & Lee J. Civ. Rits. & Soc. Just. 3 (2007) (lead article, Symposium on Race and Class in the 21st Century: Through the Lens of Hurricane Katrina).
• In Prosecutors We Trust: UK Lessons for the Illinois Disclosure Rule, 38 Loy. U. Chi. L. J. 695 (2007) (with Chris Taylor) (lead article, Illinois Judicial Symposium).
• Official Indiscretions: Considering Sex Bargains with Government Informants, 38 U.C. Davis L. Rev. 1643 (2005).
• Culture Clash: Teaching Cultural Defenses in the Criminal Law Classroom, 48 St. Louis U. L. J. 1297 (2004) (invited symposium article, teaching criminal law).
• Bringing in the State: Toward a Constitutional Duty to Protect from Mob Violence, 79 Ind.. L. J. 177 (2004).

Education

• J.D., Vanderbilt University
• A.B., Duke University

Teaching

• Criminal Law (LAWS 524)
• Criminal Procedure (LAWS 547)
• Conflict of Laws (LAWS 763)
• Law & Social Justice Seminar (LAWS 841)