Patricia D. White
Dean and Professor of Law

B.A. University of Michigan

M.A. University of Michigan

J.D. University of Michigan

Telephone: (305) 284-2394

Office: C223

Email: pwhite@law.miami.edu

SSRN

Patricia D. White is the University of Miami School of Law’s eleventh dean. Her decade’s service as dean at the Arizona State University Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law has made her a nationally-recognized leader in legal education and made her the longest serving dean in the history of that College, as well as the first woman to serve as a law dean in Arizona. Dean White was cited by the well-known legal blogger Brian Leiter as one of the nine transformative law deans in the first decade of this century. Dean White has won many awards, including the Judge Learned Hand Award for distinguished public service by the Arizona chapter of the American Jewish Committee.

Since becoming the dean of Miami Law in 2009, Dean White has continued her longstanding commitment to public service by founding the Legal Corps, a unique fellowship program that places Miami Law graduates in non profit and public sector organizations nationwide. Under Dean White’s leadership, the number of clinics at Miami Law has more than doubled, bringing the total to nine, and in 2011 Miami Law was honored by the American Bar Association Law Student Division with the Judy M. Weightman Memorial Public Interest Award, in recognition of the law school’s strong commitment to public interest through the HOPE Public Interest Resource Center.

Dean White was educated at the University of Michigan where she received degrees in philosophy and law (B.A. 1971, J.D. 1974, M.A. 1974). While attending law school, she was also a graduate student in philosophy, and an associate editor of the law review. She began her legal practice in Washington, D.C., at Steptoe & Johnson and then moved to Caplin & Drysdale. Dean White joined the Georgetown University Law Faculty in 1979, and in 1988 joined the University of Michigan. While at Michigan she was of counsel to the Detroit firm Bodman, Longley & Dahling and served for a year as Tax Advisor to the Economic Study Committee of Major League Baseball. In 1994 she joined the law faculty at the University of Utah, and was of counsel to Parsons, Behle & Latimer. She is a member of the District of Columbia, Michigan, and Utah bars and is an elected Fellow of the American College of Tax Counsel.

Across her career, Dean White has worked in the areas of tax law, the legal profession, torts, bioethics, philosophy of law, and trusts and estates, and has published in prominent law and bioethics journals. In her work in tax law, Dean White has brought to bear a unique combination of practical experience and philosophical acuity.