Professor Carliss Chatman

Sweet Peas Daycare Academy
717B Dunson Glen Drive

Professor of Law, SMU Dedman School of Law Professor Chatman’s scholarship interests are in the fields of corporate law, ethics, and civil procedure.

Carliss Chatman joined Washington and Lee University School of Law in summer of 2018 as a Visiting Assistant Professor, and currently teaches there as an Associate Professor. She previously taught at Northern Illinois University College of Law as an Assistant Professor and Stetson University College of Law as a Visiting Assistant Professor. She teaches in the areas of professional responsibility,

business organizations, non-litigation skills, and contracts. Her scholarship is largely influenced by 11 years of legal practice in complex commercial litigation, mass tort litigation, and the representation of small and start-up businesses in the United States and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. As a result, her scholarship is intersectional with a focus on issues at the heart of commercial litigation: the interplay of business entities, government, and natural persons. Professor Chatman’s work is also influenced by over two decades of service on non-profit boards and involvement with community organizations. Through leadership positions she has developed expertise in corporate governance and non-profit regulation. She has also been instrumental in strategic planning and fundraising efforts. Professor Chatman has actively advocated on behalf of non-profit organizations at state and federal legislatures. Prior to law teaching, Professor Chatman was a commercial litigation attorney in Houston, Texas. In practice, she focused on trial law, appeals and arbitration in pharmaceutical, health care, mass torts, product liability, as well as oil, gas and mineral law. In addition to negotiating settlements and obtaining successful verdicts, Professor Chatman has also analyzed and drafted position statements regarding the constitutionality of statutes and the impact of statutory revisions for presentation to the Texas Legislature. Professor Chatman is a 2004 graduate of the University of Texas School of Law, where she was a member of The Texas Journal of Women and the Law, and served on the Student Recruitment and Orientation Committee. She received her bachelor’s degree in 2001 from Duke University with honors in English. She has been admitted to the bar in all Texas courts and the U.S. District Court, Southern and Eastern Districts of Texas.

02/11/2026

Noooooo

Actor James Van Der Beek, best known for starring in US teen drama Dawson's Creek, has died aged 48

Read more: https://bbc.in/4atcFVk

11/24/2025

I’m excited to share that a new review of Values Primacy & Total Governance Through Activism was published today.

This article is the culmination of our work showing that stakeholder activism is not just expressive—it’s a real form of governance. When consumers, workers, investors, and communities coordinate around shared values, they shape corporate identity and accountability in ways formal legal doctrine often overlooks.

Thank you to the reviewer for engaging so deeply with our ideas.
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Values‑Primacy & Total Governance Through Activism Values‑Primacy & Total Governance, a draft blueprint for the co-creation of corporate governance by the people it affects.

03/10/2024

Wordle 995 4/6

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03/10/2024

Connections
Puzzle #273
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04/23/2023

Guess it’s time to use all those coupons.

Bed Bath & Beyond Files for Bankruptcy Years of losses and a failed turnaround plan left the retailer struggling to stock stores.

11/16/2022

I’m excited for today’s live episode featuring Meghan Boone of Wake Forest. The topic of the episode is “who owns the body” and we’ll be discussing why you can sell blood but not a kidney. Of course we’ll discuss how the Dobbs opinion changes things. Premiering today at 11.

Who Owns the Body? | Who Owns the Body? Wednesday, November 16, 2022 on Getting Common | VoiceAmerica - The Leader in Internet Media

Does the Law Keep our Food Safe and Healthy?

10/12/2022

This episode on food safety premiers at 11 EST. We get into what it means when food is labeled healthy, alternative “milk” and “meat,” and how we end up with those food pyramids and other guidelines. It might make you think twice about what you’re eating.

Does the Law Keep our Food Safe and Healthy? Many of us only think about food safety and our food supply when a foodborne illness is in the headlines. We are often unaware of how various government agencies regulate our food supply or how dietary recommendations are made.

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Our Story

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.

Click HERE to watch Carliss on CBS News.

Location

Houston

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Telephone

+17133645367

Website

http://Www.professorchatman.com/

Address

Houston, TX