Jamelle Sharpe

Dean
Professor of Law
Guy Raymond Jones Faculty Scholar

About

Professor Jamelle C. Sharpe is a nationally recognized expert on federal administrative law and the federal judiciary. His research focuses on the constitutional and statutory divisions of policymaking authority between courts and administrative agencies. His work has been published in the Administrative Law Review, the William and Mary Law Review, the George Mason Law Review, the Cardozo Law Review.  His 2018 article, Delegation and Its Discontents, was awarded the Carroll P. Hurd Award for Excellence in Faculty Scholarship. The first edition of Professor Sharpe’s casebook, Administrative Law: A Lifecycle Approach, was awarded the Wayne R. LaFave for Excellence in Faculty Scholarship in 2022. He has provided analysis and commentary for media outlets on a variety of issues, including judicial politics, separation of powers, and immigration law.

Since joining the faculty in 2008, Professor Sharpe has held numerous academic leadership positions at the College of Law, on the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign campus, and in the broader legal academy. He served as the College’s Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs (2013-2016), as a Provost Fellow (2017 calendar year), and as a fellow in the CIC Academic Leadership Program (2015-2016).  He chaired the AALS Conflicts of Law Section, was Chair-elect of the AALS Administrative Law, and served as President of the University of Illinois’ Phi Beta Kappa chapter. In 2018, Professor Sharpe chaired the Urbana-Champaign campus’ Consensual Relationship Policy Review Task Force.

Professor Sharpe currently teaches Administrative Law, Federal Courts, and Immigration Law. Since joining the College of Law faculty in 2008, he has been selected for the University of Illinois List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent by Their Students twenty times.  In addition, the College of Law’s students selected him to be a commencement Faculty Hooder in 2015, 2021, and 2023.

Before joining the College of Law faculty, Professor Sharpe was a Bigelow Teaching Fellow and Lecturer in Law at the University of Chicago Law School (2006-2008). Prior to that, he clerked for the Honorable Gerald Bard Tjoflat of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit (2005-2006), and was a litigation associate at Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP in New York (2003-2005).

Professor Sharpe received his J.D. from Yale Law School, where he was managing editor of the Yale Journal of International Law. He graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from New York University, where he earned a B.A. in English and American Literature. During the three years prior to attending Yale Law School, Professor Sharpe was an analyst in the Investment Banking Division of Morgan Stanley in New York.

Education

JD Yale Law School
BA New York University

Areas of Expertise

Administrative Law
Federal Courts
Immigration Law

Courses

Administrative Law
Federal Courts

Selected Publications

Administrative Law: A Lifecycle Approach, Wolters Kluwer (Aspen Casebook Series) (2021).

Delegation and its Discontents, 64 WAYNE L. REV. 185 (2018).

Judging Congressional Oversight, 65 ADMIN. L. REV. 183 (2013).

Legislating Preemption, 53 WM. & MARY L. REV. 163 (2011).

Toward (A) Faithful Agency in the Supreme Court’s Preemption Jurisprudence, 18 GEO. MASON L. REV. 367 (2011).

Beyond Borders: Disassembling the State-Based Model of Federal Forum Fairness, 30 CARDOZO L. REV. 2897 (2009).

The Contracts Clause, in THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES (David S. Tanenhaus ed., 2008).

See All Publications

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