Louis D Bilionis

Dean Emeritus Louis D. Bilionis served as Dean of the University of Cincinnati College of Law from 2005 to 2015.  He is a nationally recognized scholar in the areas of constitutional law and criminal law and procedure, with his work published in leading law journals such as the Michigan Law Review, Texas Law Review, Georgetown Law Journal, University of California-Los Angeles Law Review, Emory Law Journal, North Carolina Law Review, and Law and Contemporary Problems. He has taught constitutional law, criminal law, criminal procedure, and evidence, as well as seminars on capital punishment, constitutional law and theory, criminal law and procedure, sentencing, and legal professionalism. 
Prior to assuming the deanship, Dean Bilionis was on the law faculty at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, focusing his research and teaching on diverse issues in constitutional law and criminal law, including the transformation of judicial review in the Supreme Court, the Constitution's relationship to substantive criminal law, the Eighth Amendment and capital punishment, and state constitutional law. In 1999, he was appointed UNC's first Samuel Ashe Distinguished Professor of Constitutional Law.
Before joining academia, Dean Bilionis was in private practice with the firm of Ropes & Gray in Boston, representing major national and multinational corporations in litigation. His interest in constitutional law and commitment to the cause of equal justice led Dean Bilionis back to North Carolina, where he served for several years in the Office of the Appellate Defender as an assistant appellate defender representing indigent criminal defendants, with an emphasis on capital punishment appeals. 
Dean Bilionis graduated from Harvard Law School magna cum laude in 1982, serving on the Board of Student Advisors. Upon graduation from law school, he clerked for the Honorable Francis D. Murnaghan, Jr., of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. He was a Morehead Scholar at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, where he was elected Editor-in-Chief of The Daily Tar Heel and graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a double major in Economics and English.
Active in civic and professional organizations, Dean Bilionis has served on the Board of Directors of the American Civil Liberties Union and chaired the committee of the American Bar Association, Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar charged with programming for the deans of accredited law schools. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, where he was vice chair for community engagement, and on the board of Linton Chamber Music.

AB: University of North Carolina

JD: Harvard Law School