Leslie Kendrick

Vice Dean
David H. Ibbeken '71 Research Professor of Law

Biography
Publications
Courses
Media

Leslie Kendrick is an expert in the First Amendment and freedom of expression, particularly the scope and structure of free speech rights. She writes and teaches courses in torts, property and constitutional law. Her work has appeared in the Harvard Law Review, Columbia Law Review, Michigan Law Review, Virginia Law Review, the Supreme Court Review, Legal Theory, and Philosophy & Public Affairs.

Kendrick is a member of the American Law Institute, as well as past chair of the AALS Section on Torts and Compensation Systems and a member of the Harvard Higher Education Forum. In 2014, she received the Law School’s Carl McFarland Prize for outstanding scholarship by a junior faculty member. In 2017, she received the University of Virginia’s All-University Teaching Award.

Kendrick received a B.A. in classics and English as a Morehead Scholar at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She received her master's and doctorate in English literature at the University of Oxford, where she studied as a Rhodes Scholar. She earned a J.D. as a Hardy Cross Dillard Scholar at UVA, where she served as essays development editor for the Virginia Law Review and received the Margaret G. Hyde Award, the Law School Alumni Association Best Note Award, the Judge John R. Brown Award for Excellence in Legal Writing, the Food & Drug Law Institute H. Thomas Austern Short Paper Award, and the Virginia State Bar Family Law Book Award. Before joining the faculty in 2008, Kendrick clerked for Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and Justice David Hackett Souter of the Supreme Court of the United States. She has been a visiting professor at UCLA Law School and Harvard Law School.

Scholarship Profile: A Fresh Look at the First Amendment (Virginia Journal 2016)

Education

J.D.
University of Virginia School of Law
2006
D.Phil.
University of Oxford
2003
M.Phil.
University of Oxford
2000
B.A.
University of North Carolina
1998

"There’s No Such Thing as Affirmative Duty,"(with Kenneth S. Abraham) (2018).

SSRN

“Another First Amendment,” Colum. L. Rev. (2018) (forthcoming).

“Lies and Free Speech Values,” L. & Philosophy (2018) (forthcoming).

“The Answers and the Questions in First Amendment Law,” in Louis P. Nelson & Claudrena N. Harold eds., Charlottesville 2017: The Legacy of Race and Inequity 70 (University of Virginia Press, 2018).

“Use Your Words: On the ‘Speech’ in ’Freedom of Speech,’” 116 Mich. L. Rev. 667 (2018).
SSRN | HeinOnline (PDF)

“Are Speech Rights for Speakers?,” 103 Va. L. Rev. 1767 (2017).
SSRN | HeinOnline (PDF)

“Free Speech as a Special Right,” 45 Philosophy & Public Affairs 87 (2017).
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“Foreword: Tort Law as a Regulatory Tool,” 10 J. Tort L. 1 (2017).

“A House Divided Against Itself: Unstable Nobility in 'A Woman Killed With Kindness,’” 64 Notes & Queries 388 (2017).

“How Much Does Speech Matter?,” 129 Harv. L. Rev. 997 (2016) (reviewing Seana Shiffrin, Speech Matters: On Lying, Morality, and the Law (2014)).
SSRN | Article | HeinOnline (PDF)

“Brandeis, Speech, and Money,” in Daniel Terris & David J. Weinstein, eds., Louis D. Brandeis, Then and Now: Essays from Brandeis University’s Commemoration of the 100th Anniversary of the Appointment of Louis D. Brandeis to the United States Supreme Court 183 (Brandeis University, 2016).

“First Amendment Expansionism,” 56 Wm. & Mary L. Rev. 1199 (2015) (symposium).
HeinOnline (PDF)

“Free Speech and Guilty Minds,” 114 Colum. L. Rev. 1255 (2014).
Article

“Nonsense on Sidewalks: Content Discrimination in McCullen v. Coakley,” 2014 Sup. Ct. Rev. 215.

“Speech, Intent, and the Chilling Effect,” 54 Wm. & Mary L. Rev. 1633 (2013).
SSRN | HeinOnline (PDF)

“Disclosure and Its Discontents,” 27 J. L. & Pol. 575 (2012).
SSRN | HeinOnline (PDF)

“Content Discrimination Revisited,” 98 Va. L. Rev. 231 (2012).
SSRN | HeinOnline (PDF)

"Content Neutrality and Compelling Interests: The October 2010 Term,” 98 Va. L. Rev. in Brief 14 (2012).
PDF

“The Lockean Rights of Bequest and Inheritance,” 17 Legal Theory 145 (2011).
SSRN

“FDA's Regulation of Prescription Drug Labeling: A Role for Implied Preemption,” 62 Food & Drug L. J. 227 (2007).
HeinOnline (PDF)

“A Test for Criminally Instructional Speech,”91 Va. L. Rev. 1973 (2005).
HeinOnline (PDF)