Professor Suzette Malveaux Receives Clyde Ferguson, JR. Award from AALS The award recognizes an outstanding legal educator who, during their career, has achieved excellence in the areas of public service, teaching, and scholarship.

By Law Communications
November 22, 2024

Suzette Malveaux, Roger D. Groot Professor of Law at Washington and Lee University School of Law, has been selected by the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) Section on Minority Groups as the winner of the 2025 Clyde Ferguson, Jr. Award. She will receive the award at the AALS annual meeting in January.

The annual award is named in honor of the late Clarence Clyde Ferguson, Jr., a professor of law and a U.S. ambassador. The award recognizes an outstanding legal educator who, during their career, has achieved excellence in the areas of public service, teaching, and scholarship. Ferguson Award winners are also recognized for the support, encouragement, and mentoring they provide to their colleagues, students, and current or aspiring members of the profession. Past awardees include University of Washington Dean Tamara Lawson, UCLA Vice Provost Jerry Kang, and Boston University School of Law Dean Angela Onwuachi-Willig.

“Professor Malveaux has worked tirelessly in support of her colleagues and students, serving as a role model for excellence and an influential mentor,” said Melanie Wilson, Dean and Roy J. Steinheimer, Jr. Professor of Law at W&L. “I am delighted to see her recognized and celebrated for her incredible and positive impact on the legal education community.”

Professor Malveaux joined W&L Law in 2024 as the Roger D. Groot Professor of Law. She previously taught at the University of Colorado at Boulder, where she was the Moses Lasky Professor of Law and Director of the Byron R. White Center for the Study of American Constitutional Law. She has taught Civil Procedure, Complex Litigation, Employment Discrimination, Civil Rights, and Constitutional Law for over two decades. Her scholarship explores the intersection of civil rights and civil procedure, as well as access-to-justice issues.

Professor Malveaux is a member of the American Law Institute and former Chair of the American Association of Law Schools’ Civil Procedure Section. She recently received the American Bar Foundation’s 2024 Outstanding Service Award and the National Civil Justice Institute’s 2024 Scholarship Award. She is co-editor of A Guide to Civil Procedure: Integrating Critical Legal Perspectives (2022) and co-author of Class Actions and Other Multi-Party Litigation: Cases and Materials (2008, 2012). Her scholarship has been published in the Harvard Law Review Forum, George Washington Law Review, Boston University Law Review, Washington University Law Review, Kansas Law Review, Boston College Law Review, and the Berkeley Journal of Employment & Labor Law.

“I am deeply honored to have been selected for the Clyde Ferguson Award,” said Professor Malveaux. “During these turbulent and troubling times, it brings me great joy to be part of such a vibrant, inspiring, fierce community of intellectual leaders and scholars.  I treasure the recognition and encouragement and am so grateful my work is making a difference.”

Professor Malveaux was a civil rights attorney and class-action specialist prior to joining the academy. For six years, she served as pro bono counsel for victims of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre in lawsuits filed in U.S. federal courts and international courts, and in legislation before the U.S. House of Representatives. Malveaux represented over 1.5 million women alleging gender discrimination against Wal-Mart in the largest employment discrimination case to date. She also second-chaired oral argument before the U.S. Supreme Court in Green Tree Fin. Corp.-Ala. v. Randolph, 531 U.S. 79 (2000), which involved compulsory, pre-dispute arbitration agreements.

Professor Malveaux graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University. She earned her J.D. from New York University School of Law, where she was a Root-Tilden Scholar, Associate Editor of the Law Review, and a Fellow in the Center for International Law.

If you know a W&L faculty member who has done great, accolade-worthy things, tell us about them! Nominate them for an accolade.