Stephen Sheppard

Steve Sheppard began his teaching career at the University of Arkansas School of Law as a legal writing instructor in 1992. He taught then at the Cooley Law School in Michigan and worked as a graduate fellow at Columbia University before returning permanently to Fayetteville in 2001. He now teaches international and environmental law, constitutional law, legal history, and jurisprudence, property and remedies and other common law courses. He is also a member of the graduate faculty in Political Science, the core faculty in Public Policy, and the core faculty of the King Fahd Center for Middle Eastern Studies. In 2005, he taught in New York University’s Global Law School Program in New York. He has lectured or presented scholarly papers in Australia, China, England, France, Germany, Italy, and Sweden.

He is a faculty adviser to the International Law Society, the Journal of Islamic Law and Culture, the Environmental Law Society, and the H.L.A. Hart Society. His service includes enlistment and commission in the U.S. Coast Guard Reserve and membership in the Iraq Advisory Group of the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, in 2005.

He practiced law with Phelps Dunbar in its Louisiana, Mississippi, and London offices, and served as a law clerk to Judge William Barbour Jr. (the United States District Court, S.D. Miss.) and to Judge E. Grady Jolly Jr. (United States Court Appeals 5th Circuit). He is a member of the bar in Mississippi.

His first degree is in political science from the University of Southern Mississippi. He holds a law degree and the master of laws from Columbia University, as well as a post-J.D. certificate in international law from the Parker School for International and Comparative Law at Columbia. He was made Master of Letters by Oxford University and, in 2006 Professor Sheppard was made Doctor of the Science of Law in Columbia University, submitting his dissertation on “The Moral Obligations of Legal Officials.”