Faculty Expertise
The University of South Carolina Joseph F. Rice School of Law has more than 50 full-time
faculty members who teach advanced courses on trial advocacy, and are committed to
excellence in teaching and research. Many of our faculty are nationally prominent
in their respective areas of expertise and are authors of leading casebooks, treatises,
and law review articles.
Media Inquiries
Please email law faculty expert requests to Andersen Cook and include your deadline, interview format, publication, and as much detail as possible
about the case(s) or topic of your piece.
Frequently sought after by both national, state, and local media outlets, our faculty
can provide your audience with straightforward answers that are clear, concise and
easy to understand.
Below, you will find a comprehensive listing of each full-time faculty member, as
well as their areas of expertise. You may click an individual's name for more information
about that particular faculty member and his/her selected achievements.
Administrative Law
Administrative law topics in South Carolina include: notice and due process, rulemaking,
the South Carolina Administrative Procedure Act, and associated case law, as well
as provide a survey of state agencies, their jurisdiction, and specific agency statutes
such as the Revenue Procedures Act.
Alternative Dispute Resolution
Over 95% of all legal disputes are resolved outside of the courts. Related topics
include the main Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) processes: negotiation, mediation
and arbitration.
Appellate Practice
Appellate litigation with a view to developing appellate practice skills, including
formulation of strategies on appeal, use of the appellate record, brief writing, and
oral advocacy.
Business Associations
Law focused on the structure and characteristics of enterprises organized to do business
in the partnership, LLC, and corporate form. Related areas include the formation,
ownership, operation, governance, and dissolution of the business entity.
Civil Procedure
Procedural steps in the prosecution and defense of civil cases in federal court. Topics
include pleadings, discovery, joinder of parties, summary judgment, default, post-trial
motions, and claim and issue preclusion.
Civil Rights
Federal civil rights relating to employment, education, housing, voting, and affirmative
action. Related topics include: race, gender, disability, language status, and familial
status.
Coastal and Ocean Law
Law involving conflicts between human use of coastal areas and the ecological integrity
of coastal systems. Related issues include, but is not limited to, sea-level-rise
impacts on beaches, public access disputes during the COVID-19 era, recent public
access litigation, beach privatization, and differences in public beach rights across
jurisdictions.
Commercial Law
Law focused on the formation, structure, and characteristics of enterprises organized
to do business in the corporate form. Related issues include shareholder and promoter
liability, division of enterprise ownership, owners and control, duties of management,
and securities regulation.
Comparative Law
This field covers various legal traditions and foreign jurisdictions. Topics include
the common law, civil law, Islamic law, indigenous and customary law, and legal pluralism.
Conflicts of Law
Law relating to transactions or relationships with elements in more than one state:
judicial and legislative jurisdiction; federal law and state law; choice of law; recognition
and enforcement of foreign judgments; interstate divorce, support, and custody.
Constitutional Law (State)
Structure of the South Carolina Government, the function of the Supreme Court in South
Carolina government, and the provisions of the South Carolina State Constitution that
guarantee and protect individual rights against governmental encroachment.
Constitutional Law (U.S.)
Structure of the Federal Government, the function of the Supreme Court in constitutional
government, and the provisions of the United States Constitution that guarantee and
protect individual rights against governmental encroachment. Topics include judicial
review, sources and limits of congressional power, presidential power, equal protection,
substantive due process and identification of unenumerated fundamental rights, freedom
of speech, and the religion clauses.
Contracts
Law governing contracts, both common law and the Uniform Commercial Code. Topics covered
include the agreement process, requirements for enforceability, interpretation and
meaning, defenses, and remedies.
Copyright Law
Case law and statutory authority pertaining to copyright protection of literary, musical,
dramatic, choreographic, pictorial, graphic, sculptural, audiovisual, and architectural
work, as well as computer software.
Criminal Law
Rules, principles, and doctrines applicable to most or many crimes. These doctrines
include actus reus (What is a criminal act?), mens rea (What states of mind are criminal?),
and the defenses of insanity, intoxication, impossibility, mistake, duress, necessity,
and self-defense.
Criminal Procedure
Procedural regulations related to procedural stages of a criminal prosecution. Related
topics include: the decision to charge and the issuance of complaints; initial appearance;
bail and pretrial release and detention; the probable cause hearing; grand jury, indictment,
and information; joinder; criminal discovery; guilty pleas and plea bargaining; speedy
trial rights and provisions; jurisdiction and venue; civil forfeiture; double jeopardy;
criminal trials and pretrial motions; sentencing, the death penalty, appeal, and post-conviction
remedies (particularly habeas corpus).
Disability
Legal issues concerning persons with disabilities in the workplace, the legal protections
provided them by federal and state statutes, and the challenges facing employers seeking
to comply with these statutory duties.
Disaster Law
Law, regulations and legal issues pertaining to disasters.
Education Law
Historical and contemporary civil liberties issues arising in the operation of the
American public school system. Related topics include religious activities in schools,
the regulation of student and teacher speech, student privacy, school safety and student
discipline.
Environmental Law
Natural resources laws are meant to ensure, among other things, that wildlife and
fisheries are managed sustainably; that fresh water is conserved and allocated fairly;
that endangered species are recovered to healthy populations; and that public and
private lands provide a wide range of goods and services.
Entrepreneurship Law & Financing
Related issues include: economics of valuation (including consideration of risk and
return and the capital asset pricing model), the efficient market hypothesis and the
accuracy of stock prices more generally (theories, evidence, and limits), the mechanics
and economics of the stock market through which firms raise equity capital, the role
of stock prices in capital allocation and corporate governance, event studies, option
theory, dividends and share repurchases, debt and leverage, and the theory of the
firm.
Evidence
Preparation and presentation of various kinds of evidence, including: proof of writings;
qualifications and examination of witnesses; privilege; opinion testimony; demonstrative,
experimental, scientific evidence; determination of relevancy; and application of
the hearsay rule.
Family Business Law
Family businesses have distinctive characteristics, both because family values influence
business choices, and because the laws governing divorce, inheritance, and trusts
can produce results at odds with what business organization laws would otherwise provide.
Lawyers practicing in this area need to be sensitive to family dynamics and aware
of how various laws overlap.
Family Law
Issues related to the legal status of childhood and the parent-child relationship,
including: the foundations of parental authority over children, the foundations of
the state's parens patriae authority to intervene in family life, the allocation of
authority to make decisions concerning children, child abuse and neglect, the child
protection legal system, and family courts and executive branch agencies which administer
relevant areas of law.
Federal Indian Law
Jurisdictional issues arising between those governments, the source and scope of Indian
sovereignty, and the recognition and enforcement of Indian land and treaty rights.
Federal Firearms Law
Federal law establishes a regulatory framework for the lawful manufacture, sale, and
possession of firearms at the national level. The federal framework generally serves
as a floor for permissible firearm use and transactions, leaving states free to supplement
with additional restrictions so long as they do not conflict with federal law.
Food & Drug Law
Law related to the regulation of human food and human drugs (prescription and OTC).
Health Law
Health law focuses on the business of health care and the laws that impact health
care business enterprises, including the tax laws governing tax-exempt organizations,
the antitrust laws, and the fraud and abuse laws. Additionally, health law also focuses
on quality of care, access to care, cost containment and the role of the public health.
Human Rights
Law pertaining to domestic, international, and regional human rights.
Immigration Law
Law related to who can legally enter, reside, and become a citizen in the polity of
the United States, a country that has attracted large numbers of immigrants throughout
its history and continues to do so today.
Intellectual Property
Law related to copyrights, patents, and trademarks. Related issues include: federal
and state trademark and unfair competition law with an emphasis on the nature, scope
and enforcement of trademark rights.
International Law
Basic contours of public international law, private international law, domestic (U.S.)
law on international issues, supranational law, and comparative law, with a particular
focus on the former three categories.
International Trade Law
International, foreign, and domestic law that American business may encounter in doing
business abroad, in selling products for export, and in competing in the U.S. with
imported goods.
Juvenile Justice
Related topics include: quality of and access to counsel for youth in delinquency
cases, systemic racial and ethnic disparities, over incarceration of youth, the role
of schools as feeders to the juvenile justice system, and transfer of youth to the
adult criminal justice system.
Labor & Employment Law
The statutory and common law rules governing the establishment and termination of
the employment relationship and regulating the conditions of employment.
Legal Profession & Legal Ethics
Different roles in which lawyers serve and the different work environments in which
lawyers are employed. Basic principles of professionalism as outlined by the Rules
of Professional Conduct. Topics also include legal malpractice, the disciplinary system,
ethical issues facing lawyers in particular fields, ethics and professionalism in
litigation, and office practice.
Legal Research & Writing
Methods of researching state statutes and case law, as well as persuasive writing
and argumentation.
Legislation
Legislative law and the legislative process. Related topics include: the legislative
power, legislative structure and procedures, interpretation and drafting of statutory
law, election laws, legislative advocacy, and regulation of lobbyists.
Mergers & Acquisitions
Federal and state law (principally that of Delaware) relating to business combinations,
both friendly and contested. Included will be coverage of asset acquisitions, mergers,
leveraged buyouts, takeover defenses, directors’ duties, and tax and accounting rules
peculiar to merger and acquisition activity, among other matters.
National Security Law
National Security Law focuses on topics that on involve homeland security, including
statues used to combat international and domestic terrorism, export control rules
and regulations, the use of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) in espionage
cases, and the civil liberties impacted by the implementation and use of laws aimed
at protecting the nation from foreign and domestic threats.
Nonprofit Organizations
Law related to the nonprofit tax exempt sector. Related topics include: the study
of the formation, structure, and characteristics of nonprofit organizations and the
major categories of federal tax exemption with an emphasis on charitable organizations
such as religious organizations, churches, educational organizations, healthcare organizations
and arts organizations.
Police Practices
Law pertaining to the roles that police play in our society, the ways in which police
agencies and officers are regulated, and how those regulations translate into police
policy and officer behavior.
Privacy Law
Privacy law governs the creation, collection, storage, and use of personal information
– from governments, public or private entities, and individuals. Privacy law touches
on a wide range of topics, like healthcare, education, financial services, social
media, and government surveillance. Core questions in the field seek to address who
is allowed to access what information, what are they allowed to do with that information,
and what does the law say about that.
Products Liability
Study of the law governing legal responsibility for losses caused by defective products.
Race & the Law
How race has been treated in American law, emphasizing both a historical perspective
and current legal issues. Related topics include: the desegregation of schools, affirmative
action, racial justice in criminal law, voting rights, and employment discrimination.
Real Property
Primarily focuses upon the acquisition, characteristics, and transferability of property
interests, as well as the relationship between privately held property interests in
land and government regulation of that land for public purposes. Topics covered in
the course will typically include personal property (gifts, bailments, lost & found),
adverse possession, estates, future interests, landlord tenant, easements, covenants,
purchase & sale, deeds, financing, and zoning.
Restorative Justice
Restorative justice is a process that addresses harm and can exist in community outside
the legal system, though it is also sometimes connected to the state legal processes,
most often criminal processes. Restorative justice operates with its own animating
set of values and ethics, and practices can be implemented for purposes unrelated
to harm. This topic also includes transformative justice, another approach to responding
to harm and violence that more firmly separates itself from the state.
Rule of Law
Study of law, institutions, and norms as they pertain to a set of identified societal
goals, often including promotion of human rights, equitable administration of justice,
and governmental accountability. Topics include judicial independence, anti-corruption
practices, fundamental rights, non-state forms of justice, access to justice, constitutional
drafting, transitional justice, and post-conflict legal reform and development.
Securities Regulation
Law focused on securities markets, including private actions and government regulation,
with a particular focus on the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange
Act of 1934.
Sex & The Law
U.S. and international legal responses to gender-based violence. Related topics include:
social constructions of gender and their relationship to violence, as well as the
historical and contemporary treatment of multiple forms of gender-based violence under
the law, such as trafficking, forced marriage, intimate partner violence, rape, sexual
harassment, sexual violence within armed conflict, and ritualized practices.
Social Justice
The study of whether and to what extent our legal system, including its law schools,
perpetuates or counteracts social injustice.
Taxation
Law related to income taxation of individuals; gross income, adjusted gross income,
applicable deductions, credits, gains and losses and nonrecognition transactions.
Additionally, law related to federal income taxation of corporations and shareholders.
Technology & Law
How law responds to, incorporates, and affects the development of new technologies.
Torts
The legal protection afforded in civil proceedings against interference by others
with the security of one’s person, property, or intangible interests; the analysis
of intentional interference, negligence, and strict liability in the context of recognized
categories of tort liability.
Transportation Law
Transportation plays a huge role in life and in law. Related topics include sudden
unintended acceleration in motor vehicles and unmanned aerial vehicles.
Wills, Trusts & Estates
Law related to how property passes when a person dies intestate or with a will.