Professor Caleb E. Nelson

Caleb E. Nelson is the Emerson G. Spies Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Virginia School of Law. Professor Nelson regularly teaches civil procedure, federal courts, and statutory interpretation, and he has also taught constitutional law. His articles have appeared in the Harvard Law Review, the Yale Law Journal, the Columbia Law Review, the University of Chicago Law Review, the Virginia Law Review, and other leading journals. In addition, he is the author of a casebook on statutory interpretation, published by Foundation Press. He is a past winner of the Scholarly Papers Competition of the Association of American Law Schools, the University of Virginia's All-University Teaching Award, and the Federalist Society's Paul M. Bator Award.

Professor Nelson earned his undergraduate degree from Harvard, where he majored in mathematics, won the Wendell Prize, and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa as a junior. Before attending Yale Law School, he was managing editor of The Public Interest, a domestic-policy quarterly. After earning his law degree, Professor Nelson clerked for Judge Stephen F. Williams on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and Justice Clarence Thomas on the U.S. Supreme Court. From 1995 to 1998, he practiced law with the Cincinnati firm of Taft, Stettinius & Hollister, where he focused on appellate litigation. He joined the Virginia faculty as an associate professor in 1998 and became a full professor in 2003.