Courses Offered:

Media Law
Constitutional Law
The Supreme Court: Current Term

Professional Biographical Information:

Sonja R. West joined the University of Georgia School of Law in the fall of 2006 as an assistant professor specializing in constitutional law, media law and the U.S. Supreme Court.

Prior to joining the Georgia Law faculty, West taught as the Hugo Black Faculty Fellow at the University of Alabama School of Law. She has also served as a judicial clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens and Judge Dorothy W. Nelson of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. Her other professional experience includes several years as an associate attorney for the Los Angeles law firms Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher and Davis Wright Tremaine, where she represented media clients on a variety of First Amendment and intellectual property issues at the trial and appellate levels.

West's work has been published in numerous law reviews and legal journals including the Michigan Law Review, the Washington University Law Review,  the Green Bag, the Lewis & Clark Law Review and the University of Chicago Law Review.

Having earned a B.A. in journalism and communication studies with honors and distinction from the University of Iowa, West worked as a reporter in Illinois, Iowa, and Washington, D.C., before entering law school. She graduated with high honors from the University of Chicago Law School, where she served as executive editor of the University of Chicago Law Review and was inducted into the Order of the Coif.