Courses Offered:

Evidence
Trial Practice
Criminal Procedure

Professional Biographical Information:

Ron Carlson, Fuller E. Callaway Chair of Law Emeritus, has been a member of the University of Georgia School of Law faculty since 1984, specializing in the areas of evidence, trial practice and criminal procedure. He assumed partial retirement in 2001, but continues to be on the UGA campus from December to May, teaching courses during the spring semester. In recent years, he has also served as a visiting professor during fall semester at both The Ohio State University and the University of Tennessee.  

A prodigious scholar and lecturer, Carlson has written numerous books on evidence, trial practice and criminal procedure as well as scores of articles in prominent law reviews. He has lectured at CLE seminars across the country and frequently leads seminars for judges and lawyers in Georgia. He also informs the public about the law and legal issues through his widely distributed commentary in the media on high-profile cases.

In 2005, Carlson was presented with the Georgia Trial Lawyers Association Lifetime Achievement Award. Additionally, the GTLA helped to establish the Ronald L. Carlson Student Award for Excellence, which is presented annually to a student excelling in Evidence, one of Carlson's specialty areas. In July 2000, he was awarded the ALI-ABA's Harrison Tweed Award for Special Merit in Continuing Legal Education, the top recognition for significant contributions to CLE at the national or state level. Carlson received the Roscoe Pound Foundation's Richard S. Jacobson Award, honoring a single national law professor for the teaching of trial advocacy in 1987 and, in 1992, he received the Federal Bar Association's highest honor, the Earl W. Kintner Award for Distinguished Service to the Federal Bar Association.

In addition to his innovative teaching in the classroom, Carlson works closely with the law school's award-winning mock trial and moot court teams. In 1989, he was chosen as the first UGA law professor to win the Josiah Meigs Award, UGA's highest honor for teaching excellence. He has also received every faculty honor presented by the law school student body at least once: the Student Bar Association Faculty Book Award for Excellence in Teaching; the Phi Delta Phi John C. O'Byrne Memorial Faculty Award for Significant Contributions Furthering Student-Faculty Relations; and the Student Bar Association and Younger Lawyers Section of the State Bar of Georgia Award for the Teaching of Legal Ethics. On four occasions he has been selected by senior classes to serve as class marshal at UGA law graduations. Carlson has served as a UGA Senior Teaching Fellow and is a charter member of the UGA Teaching Academy. In 2005, he delivered the university's Founder's Day Lecture.

Carlson has litigated numerous trial and appellate cases and has argued appeals before the U.S. Supreme Court. He appeared as one of the trial counsel in Eckerhart v. Hensley, a landmark federal case establishing the right of mental patients to adequate and humane treatment, and was one of the authors of the Federal Bar Association's amicus curiae brief to the U.S. Supreme Court in Upjohn Co. v. United States, a major case involving the corporate attorney-client privilege.

Carlson earned his bachelor's degree at Augustana College, his law degree at Northwestern University and his master of laws degree at Georgetown University. He worked as a lawyer and U.S. Commissioner prior to joining the University of Iowa law faculty. He taught at Iowa for eight years before joining the law faculty at Washington University in St. Louis, MO, where he remained until accepting an offer to join UGA.