Charles W. “Rocky” Rhodes
South Texas College of Law
Charles W. “Rocky” Rhodes is Professor of Law and the Charles Weigel II Research Professor of State and Federal Constitutional Law at South Texas College of Law Houston. His teaching and scholarship focuses on the United States Constitution, state constitutions, and federal and state judicial power and procedure.
He is the author or co-author of six textbooks and treatises on constitutional law and state constitutional law, including The Texas Constitution in State and Nation: State Constitutional Law in the Federal System and the forthcoming books Constitutional Law: Foundations, Interpretations, and Commentaries and State Constitutional Law: Individual Rights and Structural Liberties. His scholarship also includes almost forty treatise supplements, book chapters, and law review articles and essays appearing in journals such as the U.C. Davis Law Review, Harvard Journal on Legislation, Florida Law Review, Cornell Law Review Online, Tulane Law Review, Georgetown Law Journal Online, and Florida State University Law Review. His writings address a wide variety of constitutional and procedural issues, such as due process rights, free speech protections, state constitutionalism, constitutional interpretation, judicial appointments, personal jurisdiction, conflict of laws, federal practice, mandamus proceedings, and appellate procedure. His scholarship has been cited in forty judicial decisions and hundreds of journal articles.
He is often interviewed on constitutional and procedural issues by international, national, and statewide outlets such as CNN Newsroom, NPR’s Morning Edition, BBC Radio’s World Business Report, NPR’s Day to Day, Bloomberg Radio, Texas State Radio Network, Nevada Public Radio, and Public Media’s Texas Standard. He is also quoted by newspapers and magazines across the globe, including the Associated Press and Canadian Press as well as the Washington Post, USA Today, Daily Mirror (U.K.), Houston Chronicle, Dallas Morning News, Philadelphia Inquirer, San Francisco Chronicle, Washington Times, Christian Science Monitor, San Antonio Express-News, Austin American-Statesman, ABA Journal, BNA U.S. Law Week, American Lawyer, and the Danish Mandag Morgen.
He earned his undergraduate degree summa cum laude while on a National Merit Scholarship at Baylor University before enrolling at Baylor Law School, where he was Editor-in-Chief of the Baylor Law Review, the President’s Award recipient as the outstanding third-year student, and valedictorian of his graduating law school class. Before becoming a professor, he served as a law clerk and a staff attorney at the Supreme Court of Texas, practiced appellate law at the national law firm now known as Locke Lord LLP, and earned his board certification in Civil Appellate Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization. He remains actively involved in professional practice, testifying before legislatures and authoring amicus briefs on constitutional and procedural topics.