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Carliss N. Chatman is a Professor of Law at Çàɬֱ²¥ Dedman School of Law, where she teaches Business Enterprises, Race, Entrepreneurship & Inequality, Professional Responsibility, and Commercial Law. Her scholarship examines how corporate personhood, contract structures, and governance norms reinforce racial capitalism and systemic inequality.

Her work has appeared in leading law reviews including the Texas Law Review, UCLA Law Review, UC Irvine Law Review, Washington & Lee Law Review, and Michigan Journal of Race & Law, and in major media outlets such as The Washington Post, CNN, Bloomberg Law, The Hill, and NPR. She is also the author of the Amazon best-selling children’s book Companies Are People Too.

Professor Chatman is Chair of the Article 2 Committee of the Business Law Section of the American Bar Association, an Academic Fellow at the Center for Retail Investors & Corporate Inclusion, and a Faculty Affiliate at Duke University’s Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity. She founded both the AALS Section on Race and Private Law and the Law and Society Association’s Collaborative Research Network on Race and Private Law.

An award-winning teacher and scholar, she has been honored with the Çàɬֱ²¥ Dedman Law BLSA Black Faculty of the Year Award (2024), the Lutie A. Lytle Outstanding Scholar Award (2023), and the AALS Derrick A. Bell, Jr. Award (2021). She has also held faculty and visiting appointments at Washington and Lee, Northern Illinois, Stetson, the University of Florida, Boston University, William & Mary, and George Washington University, and practiced law at Vinson & Elkins LLP and Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP.

Professor Chatman earned her J.D. from The University of Texas School of Law and her B.A. in English and African-American Studies from Duke University.