Center for Law & the Economy Workshop: Carliss Chatman (SMU)

Center for Law and the Economy Workshop Series 

The Murphy Institute's Center for Law and the Economy hosts workshops each semester featuring Tulane and guest faculty from the fields of law, economics, and political science. Presenters share their latest research on a range of topics, including regulation, civil rights, the criminal legal system, and other key issues in law and political economy. Papers are distributed beforehand to the participants who read the paper and prepare discussion questions for the presenter.

The workshops, organized by Adam Feibelman, Director of the Center on Law and the Economy and Sumter D. Marks Professor of Law at Tulane Law School, are open to faculty, students, and the Tulane community. 

Carliss N. Chatman is a Professor of Law at SMU 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.