- Board of Trustees - Officers
- Faculty
- Staff
Rodney A. Smolla
Titles
- President, Vermont Law and Graduate School
Degrees
- JD, Duke University School of Law
- BA, cum laude, Yale University
Biography
President Smolla assumed the position of president of Vermont Law and Graduate School on July 1, 2022.
His prior academic leadership positions include terms as president of Furman University, and dean at the Widener Delaware Law School, Washington and Lee University Law School, and University of Richmond Law Schools. President Smolla has long been a strong advocate for experiential learning, the development of professional competencies, and civic engagement.
Professor Smolla brings to VLGS extensive experience in higher education leadership, with a special focus on strategic and operational planning, enrollment management, and fundraising.
He has been a faculty member at William & Mary, where he was head of the Institute of Bill of Rights Law, as well as the DePaul, University of Illinois, and University of Arkansas law schools, and a visiting professor at law schools at Duke, University of Georgia, University of Indiana, Denver University, and University of Melbourne. Additionally, he has served as the director of the Institute of Bill of Rights Law at the College of William and Mary, and senior fellow and project director of the Washington Annenberg Program of Northwestern University. He currently serves as the chair of the AALS Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure and in 2011 he was appointed by the governor of South Carolina as a commissioner on the South Carolina Commission of Higher Education, which included within its mission the oversight of all of South Carolina’s public universities and colleges, and licensure and programmatic approval for all public and private educational programs within the state.
President Smolla has been and remains an active litigator. He is particularly well-known for his representation of American and international clients on matters relating to defamation and invasion of privacy. He is admitted to the Illinois, Virginia, and Delaware bars, and he has participated as counsel or co-counsel in many litigation matters, in state and federal courts throughout the nation. He is a frequent advocate on a wide variety of legal issues, and has presented oral argument in state and federal courts across the country, including the Supreme Court of the United States.
The author of more than 100 articles published in law reviews and other publications, he is a nationally known scholar on matters relating to constitutional law, civil rights, freedom of speech, and mass media, particularly matters relating to libel and privacy. He is the author of five multi-volume legal treatises, all published by Thomson Reuters, updated twice annually: “Law of Defamation; Smolla and Nimmer on Freedom of Speech”; “Rights and Liabilities in Media Content, Internet, Broadcast, and Print”; “Federal Civil Rights Acts”; and “Law of Lawyer Advertising.” Among the many trade and university press books he has authored are “Suing the Press: Libel, the Media, and Power” (Oxford University Press 1986) (won ABA Silver Gavel Award Certificate of Merit); “Jerry Falwell v. Larry Flynt: The First Amendment on Trial” (St. Martin’s Press 1988); and “Deliberate Intent: A Lawyer Tells the True Story of Murder by the Book” (Crown Publishers 1999), which was made into a television movie by FX, with Timothy Hutton playing the role of Smolla.
He is a co-author of two law school casebooks: “The First Amendment: A Contemporary Approach” (West Academic 2024) (co-authored with Alan E. Garfield), and “Constitutional Law: Structure and Rights in Our Federal System” (8th Edition, Carolina Academic Press 2024) (co-authored with Willam C. Banks and Daan Braveman).
A first-generation college student, President Smolla received his JD from the Duke University School of Law and his BA cum laude from Yale University.
Expertise
- Constitutional and Civil Liberties Law
- Constitutional Law
- Defamation and Libel Law
Departments
- Administration
- Dean's Office