Linda S. Mullenix

LINDA S. MULLENIX holds the Morris and Rita Atlas Chair in Advocacy at the University of Texas School of Law. Professor Mullenix holds M.Phil. and Ph.D. degrees from Columbia University in political science and graduated Phi Beta Kappa, magna cum laude, from the City College of New York. She received her law degree from Georgetown University Law Center and practiced appellate litigation in Washington, D.C. She has held appointments as a Supreme Court Fellow at the Federal Judicial Center; was a scholar-in-residence at the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Study and Conference Center in Italy; and held the Fulbright Senior Distinguished Chair in Law in Trento, Italy. She has been a visiting professor at Harvard and Michigan Law Schools. Professor Mullenix has been a professor since 1974, teaching federal civil procedure, mass tort and class action litigation, complex multidistrict litigation, transnational collective redress measures, and state class action procedure. She also has taught federal courts, conflicts of law, professional responsibility, and civil justice reform.

In January 2012, Professor Mullenix was honored as a “Pathfinder 2012” by the Travis County Women’s Law Association "for her outstanding service to our legal community and continued inspiration as a role model and trailblazer," which recognizes women in the community who “have used their law degrees in ways that inspire the rest of us.” Professor Mullenix was a founding Director and served on the Board of Directors of the Fulbright Association of Austin and served as the vice-president of the Fulbright Commission Italian Interest Group.

Professor Mullenix is an elected Life Member of the American Law Institute, serving as the Associate Reporter for the Restatement of the Law Governing Lawyers, a consultative member of the Transnational Rules of Civil Procedure project and the Complex Litigation Project. In addition, Professor Mullenix is an elected Life Fellow of the American Bar Foundation, a Life Member of the Texas Bar Foundation, and an elected member of the International Association of Procedural Law. She was selected to contribute a chapter to the ALI's 2023 Centennial commemorative volume, on the ALI's aggregate litigation project.

Professor Mullenix is the author or co-author of twenty-five books including Public Nuisance: The New Mass Tort Frontier (Cambridge University Press 2024); Leading Cases in Civil Procedure (4th ed. 2023); Mass Tort Litigation (4th ed. 2023); Understanding Federal Courts (2d ed. 2015); Federal Courts in the Twenty-First Century (3d ed. 2007); State Class Action Practice and Procedure (2000); ALI Restatement Third, The Law Governing Lawyers (2000); and Moore's Federal Practice (2d and 3d Eds. with annual updates). She has contributed numerous book chapters and authored several professional reports. For over 35 years, Professor Mullenix has been a contributing writer for Preview of Supreme Court Cases and published hundredsof analyzes of pending Supreme Court cases dealing with procedure and federal courts. For over 30 years she wasa regular columnist for the National Law Journal.

She has written hundreds of articles published in The Chicago Legal Forum, Cornell Law Review, Georgetown University Law Journal, Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics, Harvard Law Review, Michigan Law Review, Michigan Journal of Law Reform, Minnesota Law Review, Stanford Law Review, Stanford Journal of Complex Litigation, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Northwestern Law Review, Texas Law Review, The Review of Litigation, Vanderbilt Law Review, and the William & Mary Law Review, as well as numerous other journals. Federal and state courts throughout the United States have cited Professor Mullenix’s articles on procedure and complex litigation. Since 2000 she consistently has been ranked as a top-ten most cited procedure scholar in the U.S. She also has been ranked among the top 250 legal scholars in the U.S., writing in any field.

Professor Mullenix has broadly served the profession in a number of capacities, including as Reporter for an ABA Task Force on Class Actions; Reporter for the Southern District of Texas, Civil Justice Reform Act; Reporter for the National Conference of Federal-State Judicial Relationships; Advisor, Texas Class Action Rules Subcommittee; and Advisor, National Center for State Courts, Study on Civil Discovery. Professor Mullenix has been an invited participant numerous conferences including the ABA Conference on the Future of Class Action Litigation in America; the Symposium on Cutting Edge Issues in Class Action Litigation, The Legal Forum, University of Chicago; the Class Action Conference, Judicial Conference Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure; the Gulf States Class Action Symposium; the University of Pennsylvania Symposium: Mass Torts; the ABA Class Action Institute; the Mass Tort Working Group, Judicial Conference Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure; the Special Study Conference on Federal Rules Governing Attorney Conduct, Judicial Conference Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure; the Research Conference on Class Actions, Institute for Judicial Administration and N.Y.U.; the Conference on Civil Procedure and the Future of the Federal Rules, Southwest Legal Foundation; the National Mass Tort Litigation Conference; and served as a faculty member for the Annual Conference on Complex Litigation and Resolution of Class Action Litigation. Professor Mullenix has mentored junior scholars through participation in federal courts junior scholarship workshops, and the Harvard Law School Culp Colloquium.

Since 2019 Professor Mullenix has been a collaborator on the multi-year comparative law project, Open Access CPLJ Project, Comparative Procedural Law and Justice: Power and Authority in Dispute Resolution, sponsored by the Max Planck Institute for Procedural Justice (Luxembourg). She has served on a number of advisory boards, including most recently the Scholars’ Council of the Humphreys Complex Litigation Center at George Washington University School of Law, and as a Forbes Legal Advisor.

She has appeared as a radio commentator on National Public Radio, a media commentator for Bloomberg News, and been quoted in The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the National Law Journal, CNNOpinion.com, and the Guardian (U.K.), among other media publications. Professor Mullenix has worked as counsel and as a consulting expert with plaintiffs, defendants, and objectors on numerous prominent federal and state class action cases. She has delivered lectures relating to class action and complex litigation in Austria, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Croatia, Germany, Israel, Italy, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, South Africa, Switzerland, and the U.K.

Professor Mullenix has three sons and six grandchildren. She holds dual citizenship with Italy.