Participant Info

First Name

Carliss

Last Name

Chatman

City

Lexington

State

Virginia

Zip Code

24450

Research Interests

corporate law, corporate governance, corporate ethics, corporate personhood, legal personhood

Willing to be contacted by the media

Yes

On the academic market

No

University

Washington and Lee

About Me

Carliss Chatman is an Assistant Professor at Washington and Lee University School of Law specializing in corporate and commercial law. Her 11 years of legal practice before entering the academy lends a common sense approach to her teaching and scholarship. She specializes in bringing practical experience to all of her classes, making complex legal concepts within reach for students of all backgrounds. Through service on the Advisory Board of Compliance.ai, she has worked on the cutting edge of legal regulatory technology, helping to train the machine learning platform to anticipate the research needs of those in the compliance and regulatory legal space. Her experience in leadership of non-profit boards and over two decades of social activism has allowed Professor Chatman to develop expertise on matters involving race, women's rights, and educational access. Professor Chatman is prolific on social media, lending the same practical and legally reasoned approach to public discourse that she provides in the classroom on a broad spectrum of issues. Her primary scholarly focuses are legal personhood (including corporate personhood and fetal personhood), and corporate governance. She uses legal realism, critical race theory, and feminist legal theory to reimagine and reframe thinking on corporations and contract law, giving consideration to the racialized and gendered impact of business decisions, and the limits on the freedom to contract experienced by marginalized groups. Professor Chatman has appeared on CBS News and CBS Radio, and has written for the Washington Post, CNN.com and Slate. She has given academic lectures on corporate governance, corporate personhood, and legal ethics at universities internationally, including the University of Surrey in London. She has spoken on teaching diverse groups of students at the American Association of Law Schools Annual Meeting, Stetson University College of Law, and at UC Berkeley School of Law. This spring, she will present on a panel, "Tweeting While Black: You in Danger, Girl" with Tonya Evans, Shontavia Johnson, and Tressie McMillan Cottom.

Email

cchatman@wlu.edu