Tessa L. Dysart

Tessa was previously the Assistant Director of Legal Writing and Clinical Professor of Law at the James E. Rogers College of Law. She also served as the Secretary of the Faculty Senate from (add dates) and is a member of the University Advisory Council.

Professor Dysart writes and speaks nationally on appellate advocacy issues. She is the author or editor of four books. Her publications have appeared in The Green Bag, the Columbia Human Rights Law Review, the Duke Journal of Gender Law & Policy, and the Cornell Journal of Law & Public Policy.

Professor Dysart is a graduate of Willamette University and Harvard Law School. She clerked for the Hon. Dennis W. Shedd of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. Her practice experience includes working for the United States Department of Justice Office of Legal Policy and the Senate Judiciary Committee.

In 2021, Professor Dysart was appointed to a four-year term on the Arizona State Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. She also serves on the Arizona Board of Regents Free Expression Committee. Professor Dysart is a member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. Since 2023, she has served as a pro tem judge for the Tohono O'odham Nation.

Representative Publications

• Winning on Appeal:  Better Briefs and Oral Argument (3d ed., forthcoming 2017) (co-author, with Ruggerio J. Aldisert & Leslie H. Southwick).
• In Search of Sound Judg(e?)ment, 21 Green Bag 2d 195 (2018).
• The Origination Clause, the Affordable Care Act, and Indirect Constitutional Violations, 24 Cornell J. L. & Pub. Pol'y 451 (2015).
• Child, Victim, or Prostitute? Justice Through Immunity for Prostituted Children, 21 Duke J. Gender L. & Pol'y 255 (2014).
• The Protected Innocence Initiative:  Building Protective State Law Regimes for America's Sex-Trafficked Children, 44 Colum. Hum. Rts. L. Rev. 619 (2013).
• Complete list of publications

Education

• J.D. Harvard Law School

  2005

  Co-managing Editor (2004 - 2005), Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy

• Fullbright ScholarshipMoscow Institute for Advanced Studies, Moscow, Russia

  2001 - 2002

• B.A. Willamette University, Salem, Oregon

  2001

  Graduated magna cum laude

Work Experience

• Assistant Director of Legal Writing & Associate Clinical Professor of Law

  James E Rogers College of Law

  2017 - present

• Adjunct & Assistant Professor of Law

  Regent University School of Law, Virginia Beach, Virginia

  2011; 2012 - 2017

• Associate Counsel, American Center for Law & Justice

  Washington, D.C.; Virginia Beach, Virginia

  2009 - 2012

• Counsel, United States Senate Judiciary Committee

  Washington, D.C.

  2008 - 2009

• Counsel, Office of Legal Policy

  United States Department of Justice, Washington, D.C.

  2006 - 2008

• Judicial Clerk

  Hon. Dennis W. Shedd, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, Columbia, South Carolina

  2005 - 2006