Teressa Ravenell

Associate Dean for Faculty Research and Development
Professor of Law

Biography

Teressa Ravenell joined Villanova Law in 2006 and began serving as associate dean for faculty research and development in June of 2019. She teaches Civil Procedure, Criminal Procedure, Civil Rights Litigation and Police Conduct. Her scholarship focuses on § 1983, the federal civil remedy for constitutional deprivations, and examines the points at which § 1983 jurisprudence converges with other areas of the law. She is an expert on qualified immunity, municipal liability and federal civil rights litigation against police officials. In 2020, she contributed to the American Constitution Society’s What’s the Big Idea? project, a collection of essays by leading scholars in the legal field recommending policy changes to incoming federal and state administrations. Her scholarship has appeared or is forthcoming in Temple Law Review, North Carolina Review, Texas Law Review and other leading journals.  

Ravenell received her BA from the University of Virginia and her JD from Columbia University School of Law.  While at Columbia, she was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar. Following law school, Ravenell was an associate with Wilmer, Cutler, & Pickering in Washington, DC and clerked for the Honorable Raymond A. Jackson of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, before joining the College of William and Mary law faculty as a visiting assistant professor.

Practice Experience

• Judicial Clerk for the Honorable Raymond A. Jackson of the United Stated District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia 
• Wilmer, Cutler, & Pickering (Washington, DC)
• Member of the Virginia Bar since 2002