Patricia L. Bryan

Henry P. Brandis Distinguished Professor of Law, Emerita

Areas of Expertise

  • Law and Literature
  • Taxation-Federal

Biography

Patricia Bryan joined the Carolina Law faculty in 1982 and serves as the Henry P. Brandis Distinguished Professor of Law, Emerita. Her teaching and research interests include tax and law and literature. She is the author of Midnight Assassin: A Murder in America’s Heartland (Algonquin 2005, University of Iowa 2007) and the co-editor of Her America, a collection of stories by Susan Glaspell. Bryan has written and spoken extensively about Glaspell’s work. She has also done historical research into several criminal cases from the 19th century and has published articles about them in the Stanford Law Review and the Annals of Iowa. Most recently, she has researched and written about the federal tax exemption and public financing for sports stadiums. She has received teaching awards from graduating law school classes at UNC and Stanford University, where she spent a year as a visiting professor.

Bryan earned her B.A. from Carleton College, graduating magna cum laude, and then attended the University of Iowa Law School. She graduated first in her law school class and served as a Notes and Comments Editor of the Iowa Law Review. She practiced tax law for six years in New York City—first with Dewey, Ballantine and then with Kaye, Scholer—while earning a master’s degree in taxation from New York University. Bryan has been a visiting professor at Stanford Law School and the University of Iowa Law School, and an adjunct professor at North Carolina Central University.

Education

  • LL.M., New York University Law School (1982)
  • J.D., University of Iowa (1976)
  • B.A. (Phi Beta Kappa), Carleton College (1973)

Selected Publications

The Hossack Murder and the Genesis of 'Trifles,' in SUSAN GLASPELL IN CONTEXT (J. Ellen Gainor, ed.) (Cambridge U. Press, 2023).
Document Link

THE PLEA: THE TRUE STORY OF YOUNG WESLEY ELKINS AND HIS STRUGGLE FOR REDEMPTION (with T. Wolf) (Univ. of Iowa Press, 2022).
KF223.E428 B79 2022

The Braves’ Plan to Desert Turner Field and Move Again: Public Funding for a New Stadium in the Suburbs, THE COOPERSTOWN SYMPOSIUM ON BASEBALL AND AMERICAN CULTURE, 2015-16 (McFarland Press 2017).
GV867.64 C66 2015

Book Review (of Peter Kaufman, SKULL IN THE ASHES: MURDER, A GOLD RUSH MANHUNT AND THE BIRTH OF CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE IN AMERICA (Univ. of Iowa Press, 2013)), 73 THE ANNALS OF IOWA 178 (Spring 2014).
HV8079.H6 K38 2013

The Building of Yankee Stadium: Tax-Exempt Bonds and Federal Subsidies for the Richest Team in Baseball, THE 2011-2012 COOPERSTOWN SYMPOSIUM ON BASEBALL AND AMERICAN CULTURE 117 (McFarland Press, 2013).
GV867.64 .C66 2011

On the Brink:  Babe Ruth in Dennis Lehane's The Given Day (with T. Wolf), in THE 2009-10 COOPERSTOWN SYMPOSIUM ON BASEBALL AND AMERICAN CULTURE 42 (McFarland & Co. 2011).
GV863.A1 C635

Tribute: Remembering Sally Burnett Sharp, 88 N.C. L. REV. 1209 (2010).
Westlaw | Lexis/Nexis | Hein | BEPress | Document Link

John Wesley Elkins, Boy Murderer, and His Struggle for Pardon, 69 ANNALS OF IOWA 261 (2010).
Document Link

HER AMERICA: "A JURY OF HER PEERS" AND OTHER STORIES BY SUSAN GLASPELL (with M. Carpentier), (University of Iowa Press, 2010).
PS3513.L35 H47 2010

Reading Literature in Law School and Beyond, N.C. ST. B. J., Summer 2009 at 24.
Hein