Tessa L. Dysart

Tessa L. Dysart is the Assistant Director of Legal Writing and Clinical Professor of Law at the University of Arizona, James E. Rogers College of Law. She also serves as the Editor-in-chief of the Journal of Appellate Practice & Process, which was acquired by the University of Arizona Law in June 2020.

Professor Dysart writes and speaks nationally on appellate advocacy issues. She is the author or editor of four books, including the third edition of Winning on Appeal: Better Briefs and Oral Arguments (with the Hon. Leslie H. Southwick of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit), The Short & Happy Guide to Judicial Clerkships, and The Supreme Court Counting Book. 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. She manages the Appellate Advocacy Blog, which was added to the ABA’s list of best law blogs in 2018. 

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.

Curriculum Vitae

SSRN Published Papers

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

Work Experience