Thomas J. Miles is the Dean and Clifton R. Musser Professor of Law and Economics at the University of Chicago Law School.

As its 14^th Dean, Miles has deepened the Law School’s distinctive commitment to path-breaking scholarship and transformative education since 2015. Under his leadership, the Law School recruited more than a dozen academic and clinical faculty members and inaugurated the category of professor from practice. The scholarly ideas of the faculty have been supported and shared more widely through the launch of three new centers: the Center on Law and Finance, the Constitutional Law Institute, and the Malyi Center for the Study of Institutional and Legal Integrity. The clinical program expanded with the addition of three new clinics: the Innovation Clinic, the Jenner & Block Supreme Court and Appellate Clinic, and the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic. During Miles’s deanship, the Law School recruited highly talented and diverse cohorts of students. He steered the Law School through the COVID-19 pandemic. The Law School undertook the first significant revision to the 1L curriculum since 1977 and introduced the accelerated JD/MBA program. The Law School’s vibrant student life was enhanced with new programs in the areas of freedom of expression and diversity and inclusion, including the introduction of a pre-orientation program. The placement of graduates into clerkships nearly doubled. These activities have been supported by generous philanthropy, including a completion of the Inquiry & Impact Campaign with a record amount for the Law School and the highest participation rate within the University. Six new named professorships, including the first named clinical professorship, have been deployed, and financial aid for students reached a new high.

As a scholar, Miles makes creative use of the methods of law and economics to investigate legal questions not conventionally thought to fall within that field. For example, he has written on judicial behavior and immigration enforcement.

Miles has taught a wide variety of courses at the Law School, including securities regulation, torts, first-year criminal law, economic analysis of law, and federal criminal law. In 2009, he received the Graduating Students Award for Outstanding Teaching.

Miles received a PhD in economics from the University of Chicago, a JD from Harvard Law School, and a BA from Tufts University. He clerked for the Hon. Jay S. Bybee of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and from 2005 to 2013, he was a Co-Editor of the Journal of Legal Studies.