Biography
Lyrissa Lidsky is the Raymond & Miriam Ehrlich Chair in U.S. Constitutional Law at University of Florida—Levin College of Law. She previously served as Dean of the University of Missouri School of Law from 2017–2022. The focus of her research and teaching is the intersection of tort law and the First Amendment, with an emphasis on defamation and free speech issues in social media. Missouri Lawyers Media named Professor Lidsky its 2020 Woman of the Year based on her scholarship, passion for law, mentorship of students, and engagement of constituencies supporting the school of law.
Before becoming dean at Missouri, Professor Lidsky served in a variety of leadership roles at UF Law, including as associate dean for graduate and international programs and associate dean for faculty development. She also held the Stephen C. O’Connell Chair in Law and received a number of teaching awards during her twenty-three-year tenure at UF, including student-selected awards such as Teacher of the Year (twice) and Faculty Graduation Speaker (three times), as well as Teacher of the Year, which was selected by a faculty committee.
Professor Lidsky is co-reporter on the Restatement of Defamation and Privacy, which is now in progress. She is co-author of a leading media law casebook, a First Amendment casebook, and a reference book on press freedom and has published dozens of articles, culminating in a forthcoming article in the Virginia Law Review, co-authored with Professor Christina Koningisor, titled “First Amendment Disequilibrium.” Professor Lidsky’s work on anonymous speech has been cited by a number of state supreme courts and the highest courts of Canada and Hong Kong.
Before becoming a law professor, Professor Lidsky served as a clerk for the Honorable Joseph T. Sneed of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco. She received her law degree from the University of Texas School of Law, with high honors, was initiated into Order of the Coif in recognition of her scholastic achievement, and served as articles editor of the Texas Law Review. Before law school, Professor Lidsky was a Fulbright Scholar at Cambridge University in England, studying medieval legal history and early development of the common law. She received her bachelor’s degree, summa cum laude, in English and political science from Texas A&M University.