Expertise
Torts
Biography
Professor John Nockleby is founding Director of the Civil Justice Program and the Journalist Law School at Loyola Law School. A graduate of Harvard Law School, he served as an editor of the Harvard Law Review. He subsequently clerked for the Honorable Francis D. Murnaghan, Jr. of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. He then practiced as a civil rights lawyer in North Carolina, where, under the tutelage of famed civil rights lawyer Julius Chambers, he argued numerous cases in the trial and appellate courts, participated in three cases decided in the U.S. Supreme Court (each 9-0), and served as a cooperating attorney with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. Nockleby was appointed lead counsel in many class action lawsuits, focusing extensively on issues of race and gender discrimination, constitutional, and tort issues. Shifting from practice to academia, he began his teaching career at Loyola Law School. He served as a Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School from 1993-95, and again in 2000, and remained on Harvard’s adjunct faculty between 1995-2000 while teaching full time at Loyola. He has also taught at Northeastern University School of Law, the Southwest Institute of Law and Political Science in Chongqing, China, and in Loyola’s summer program in Costa Rica.
Nockleby’s research interests lie in supporting access to justice in the courts, particularly for underrepresented populations; the impact of new technologies upon privacy; the First Amendment and torts. In the infancy of distance learning, the Berkman Center at Harvard Law School published his online courses on privacy which were taught to thousands of participants around the globe. More recently, Loyola offered its first-ever online course, Technology & Privacy, which Nockleby and Professor Karl Manheim jointly teach. His other publications include essays on the First Amendment, the civil jury and the civil justice system, the politics of tort retrenchment, and privacy. He has taught from his own torts textbook for several years, and is lead author of The Journalist’s Guide to American Law (Routledge, 2012; paperback ed. 2014). The latter volume grew out of the development of the Journalist Law School, and reflects Loyola’s and its faculty’s continuing commitment to fostering public education concerning the justice system.
In 1996, the Consumer Attorneys of Los Angeles (CAALA) honored Nockleby with their Education Award. In 2011, the American Board of Trial Advocates (ABOTA) appointed Nockleby an Honorary Diplomate. He was named by Loyola’s graduating day class with the 2016 Excellence in Teaching award.
Publications, Research and Related Material
Courses Taught
- Technology and Privacy
- Torts
- Remedies
- First Amendment Survey
Education
- BA, with highest honors, University of Montana
- JD, Harvard University Law School
Public Service
- First Annual California Legislative-Judicial Summit (Sacramento) (2019)
- Visiting Faculty, National Judicial College (Washington DC) (2018)
- Member, Los Angeles County Bar Association (LACBA) Commission on the Study of Women in the Profession (2014-present)
- Board member, Loyola Immigrant Justice Clinic (2013-present)
Selected Scholarship
- When Losses are Too Big: Evaluating the Economic Loss Doctrine in California, 53 Loy. L.A. Rev. (2020)
- The Journalist’s Guide to American Law, (with Laurie Levenson, Karl Manheim, Jay Dougherty, Victor Gold, Allan Ides, Dan Martin) (Routledge, 2014), Paperback ed., 2014.
- “Faces of the Tort Pyramid: Compensation, Regulation, and the Profession,” in The Paradox of Professionalism: Lawyers and the Possibility of Justice (Cambridge U. Press, 2011) (Scott Cummings, Ed.)
- Access to Justice: It’s Not for Everyone, 42 Loyola Law Review __ (2009)
- Torts: Cases & Materials (forthcoming)
- “How to Manufacture a Crisis: Evaluating Empirical Claims Behind ‘Tort Reform’,” 86 Oregon Law Review 533 (2007)
- Introduction: “Law & Popular Culture,” 41 Loyola Law Review 539 (2007) (Symposium Introduction)
- Foreword, “The Economics of Civil Justice,” 39 Loy. L.A. Rev. 683 (2006) (Symposium Introduction)
- Encyclopedia of American Civil Liberties (Routledge Reference, 2006) (contributor, 11 essays on Forced Speech, Hate Speech, Invasion of Privacy, Legal Realists, Picketing, Prior Restraints, Speech and its Relation to Violence, Traditional Public Forums, FCC v. Pacifica Foundation, Frisby v. Schultz, and Hague v. C.I.O.)
- “What’s a Jury Good For?” 11 Voir Dire 6 (Issue 2, Summer 2005)
- “100 Years of Conflict: The Past and Future of ‘Tort Retrenchment,’ ” (with Shannon Curreri) 38 Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review 1021 (2005)
- “Access to Justice: Can Business Co-exist with the Civil Justice System? An Introduction,” 38 Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review 1009 (2005)
- “What Ends Does the Tort System Serve?,” The Advocate (July 2005)
- CyberPrivacy, an online course launched October 28, 2003, and published by the Berkman Center of Harvard Law School.
- “What’s Wrong with a National ID?,” Loyola Lawyer (Fall, 2002)
- Privacy in Cyberspace, (published by Berkman Center of Harvard Law School, Spring 2002)
- “Why Internet Voting?,” 34 Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review 1023 (2001)
- “Hate Speech,” in Encyclopedia of the American Constitution (2nd ed., edited by Leonard W. Levy, Kenneth L. Karst et al., New York: Macmillan, 2000).
- “Hate Speech in Context: The Case of Verbal Threats,” 42 Buffalo Law Review 653 (1994)
Contact
Burns 421
919 Albany St.
Los Angeles, CA 90015
(o) 213.736.1163
(f) 213.380.3769
