Areas of Expertise

About Lyrissa Lidsky

Before becoming dean of the University of Missouri School of Law in July 2017, Lyrissa Lidsky served in a variety of leadership roles at the University of Florida. There she was associate dean for graduate and international programs and associate dean for faculty development. She also held the Stephen C. O’Connell Chair in Law and received a number of teaching awards during her 23-year tenure at UF, including student-selected awards such as Teacher of the Year (twice) and Faculty Graduation Speaker (three times), as well as Teacher of the Year, which was selected by a faculty committee.

Lidsky’s scholarship focuses on the intersection of Torts and the First Amendment, with a particular emphasis on defamation and other free speech issues in social media contexts. Widely regarded as a prominent First Amendment scholar, she is co-author of a leading Media Law casebook, a First Amendment casebook, and a reference book on press freedom and has published dozens of articles, culminating in her forthcoming article in California Law Review titled #I U: Considering the Context of Online Threats. Her work on anonymous speech has been cited by a number of state supreme courts and the highest courts of Canada and Hong Kong.

Before becoming a law professor, Lidsky served as a clerk for the Honorable Joseph T. Sneed of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco, Calif. Lidsky received her law degree from the University of Texas School of Law with high honors. She was initiated into Order of the Coif in recognition of her scholastic achievement and served as articles editor of the Texas Law Review. Before law school, she was a Fulbright Scholar at Cambridge University in England, studying medieval legal history and early development of the Common Law, She received her bachelor’s degree, summa cum laude, in English and political science from Texas A&M University.