Sherley Cruz joined the faculty of the University of Tennessee College of Law as an Assistant Professor in 2019 teaching and supervising students in the Advocacy Clinic. Her scholarship explores the intersections of access to justice, low-wage workers’ rights, and cross-cultural communications. An up-and-coming scholar, her most recent law review article, Essentially Unprotected, received UT Law’s Wilkinson Junior Research award and was selected for presentation at the 2021 Equality Law Scholars’ Forum and the 2021 AALS New Voices of Poverty Law Workshop. Professor Cruz serves on the Board of Governors for the Society of American Law Teachers, she is the Secretary – Treasurer of the AALS Section on Employment Discrimination Law, and she serves on the Executive Board of the AALS Civil Rights Section and the Executive Committee of the AALS Section on Critical Theories. She has also served as the faculty fellow for UTK’s Office of Community Engagement and Outreach, on UTK’s Junior Faculty Fellows Advisory Council, and as co-chair of the AALS Clinicians of Color Committee. In 2024, she received the College of Law’s Thomas and Elizabeth Fox Faculty Excellence Award and UTK’s Angie Warren Perkins Chancellor’s Honors award for her promise as a scholar and professor in 2022.

Prior to joining UT Law, Professor Cruz was a Practitioner in Residence with American University’s Washington College of Law’s Civil Advocacy Clinic (WCL) where she supervised law students on economic justice cases such as wage theft, unemployment insurance, and community legal education matters. In 2018, she received WCL’s Public Interest Program Faculty Award. Before WCL, Professor Cruz was the Director of Litigation and Education and a Clinical Fellow at Suffolk University Law School with the Housing Discrimination Testing Program and accelerator practice. At Suffolk, she supervised law students handling housing discrimination cases and conducted community legal education regarding fair housing duties and responsibilities. Professor Cruz started her teaching career as a Visiting Assistant Professor at Boston University School of Law where she helped launch the Employment Rights Clinic.

Before entering academia, Professor Cruz worked as a staff attorney at Greater Boston Legal Services in the Employment Law Unit. There she represented low-wage and immigrant workers with unemployment, wage and hour, discrimination, workplace harassment, and working condition issues, in addition to supporting immigrant worker centers with organizing campaigns and community actions. Professor Cruz has also served as the Outreach Coordinator for the Office of the Attorney General of Massachusetts’s Fair Labor Division.

Born in the Dominican Republic, Professor Cruz has a J.D. from Boston University School of Law and a B.A., cum laude, from Boston University. She has been an active leader in community and bar associations. Her former service includes chair of the DC Hispanic Bar Public Service Committee, vice president of the Massachusetts Association of Hispanics, the Massachusetts Bar Association’s Diversity and Inclusion Task Force, and the Massachusetts Women’s Bar Association’s Women’s Leadership Initiative. The National Law Journal and Connecticut Law Tribune recognized Professor Cruz as a 2015 Boston Rising Star. In 2012, the Massachusetts Bar Association and Lawyers Weekly recognized Cruz as an Up-and-Coming Lawyer.

• Education & Experience
• Publications

J.D., Boston University School of Law
B.A., Boston University

Curriculum Vitae

Social Science Research Network (SSRN)

Full list of SSRN scholarly papers