Matthew R. Hall is an Associate Professor of Law and Jesse D. Puckett Jr. Lecturer. He regularly teaches contracts, criminal law, and academic legal writing.
Biography
Matthew R. Hall teaches 1L Contracts in the Fall and 1L Criminal Law in the Spring. During the 1L Winter Intersession, you will find him teaching Contract Negotiation and Drafting and serving as the overall coordinator for the program. For upper-level students, he teaches Criminal Procedure I in the Fall and Legislation in the Spring. For 2L members of the Mississippi Law Journal, he offers Academic Legal Writing. And for new members of the Moot Court Board, Professor Hall teaches Appellate Advocacy. During the Summer session, he teaches Criminal Law and Legal Methods to incoming 1Ls. He also occasionally teaches Trial Practice. Over the years, Professor Hall has taught Administrative Law, Constitutional Law, National Security Law, Property, and a seminar on Future Law. He serves as the Faculty Advisor to the Moot Court Board, OUTLaw, and the ACLU.
Professor Hall also works extensively with undergraduates, teaching Introduction to American Law and Reasoning for students in the Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors College Honors College. He also spent several years teaching freshman seminars for students at the Honors College. Previously, he taught intelligence analysis for the University’s Intelligence and Security Studies program.
From 2011 to 2015, Professor Hall served as Senior Associate Dean and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs.
Professor Hall’s scholarship has focused on the intersection of criminal procedure, national security law, and immigration. He has also written about efforts to reconcile civil disobedience and the rule of law.
Before joining the faculty in 2001, Professor Hall worked as an attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice, where he served in the Civil Division’s Office of Immigration Litigation and specialized in national security and counter-terrorism matters. Professor Hall obtained his position at Justice through the Attorney General’s Honor Program. While with the Justice Department, he worked on certiorari oppositions before the U.S. Supreme Court, he handled appeals in nine of the U.S. Courts of Appeals, and he litigated cases in a dozen different U.S. District Courts.
Prior to joining the Department of Justice, Professor Hall held two clerkships with federal judges. First, he served as a judicial clerk for Judge Terence T. Evans, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. He then clerked for Judge John G. Heyburn II, U.S. District Court for the Western District of Kentucky
Professor Hall received his J.D., summa cum laude, from the University of Kentucky College of Law, where he graduated Order of the Coif. In law school, he earned a spot on the Moot Court Board and he was Editor-in-Chief of the Kentucky Law Journal. He attended law school in his thirties. Before law school, he held a variety of jobs – high school teacher and assistant principal, staffer for a U.S. Senator and a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, carpenter and contractor for alternative energy houses, and market researcher and strategic planning analyst for the heavy truck industry. Professor Hall received his B.A., cum laude, from Harvard University, where he studied Government. He grew up as the child of two English professors in Storrs, Connecticut and Lexington, Kentucky.
He is married to Melissa Booth Hall, who is the Co-Director of the Southern Foodways Alliance at the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University. They have two sons – both Ole Miss history graduates: Robert, along with his wife Lindsey, directs Camp Hopewell, a Presbyterian Summer Camp and Retreat Center in Oxford; and Daniel, a lawyer and associate at Carr Allison in Birmingham, Alabama.
When he’s not at the law school, you will find Professor Hall bicycling on the roads around Lafayette County or cheering on the Kentucky Wildcats, especially during basketball season. He is also an elder in at First Presbyterian Church of Oxford and spent twelve years serving on the national denomination’s Advisory Committee on Litigation, providing guidance on positions the Presbyterian Church USA should take in cases before the Supreme Court.
Education
B.A. Government, Harvard University (1987)
J.D. Law, University of Kentucky (1997)