Stevie Swanson
Professor
B.A., Yale University, 1997
J.D., University of Michigan Law School, 2000
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Professor Stevie Swanson holds an undergraduate degree from Yale University in African and African American Studies. Her J.D. is from the University of Michigan Law School where she served on the Michigan Journal of Race & Law.
Professor Swanson teaches Property, Secured Transactions, Slavery & Human Trafficking, and Real Estate Discrimination. She has been a law professor for twenty-three years. Before returning to the Cooley Law School Tampa Bay campus in Summer 2026, she taught for five years at Lincoln Memorial University Duncan School of Law, served as a Visitor at Mitchell Hamline School of Law for one year, taught for nearly fifteen years at Cooley Law School, and served for three years as a Visiting Clinical Assistant Professor the University of Michigan Law School. Prior to teaching, she practiced predominantly in real estate law but also has experience with general practice litigation.
Professor Swanson was awarded Professor of the Year in 2026, 2022, 2019, 2018, and 2016. She won the Stanley E. Beattie Teaching Award in 2017 and 2016. She is the recipient of the Equal Access to Justice Award in 2013 and 2011, the Distinguished Service Award in 2011, and the Great Deeds Award in 2008.
She has previously served on the Nominating Committee of the East Tennessee Lawyers’ Association for Women, as the Co-Chair of the Hillsborough Association for Women Lawyers Diversity Committee in Tampa, Florida and as a five-year appointee of the Michigan Land Title Standards Committee at the Michigan State Bar.
Professor Swanson’s recent law review publications highlight her expertise in real estate law. Her article Indignity Perpetuated: Race-based Housing Post-Reconstruction to the Fair Housing Act’s Impact on the Digital Age: Where Do We Go from Here? was published in the Connecticut Public Interest Law Journal in 2023. Professor Swanson’s article The Metamorphoses of Racial Discrimination in American Real Estate was published by the Minnesota Journal of Law & Inequality in 2024. Her article Creatively Concealed but Persistently Pervasive: Racial Steering in American Real Estate was published by the Wisconsin Journal of Law, Gender & Society in 2025.
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Articles (Law Reviews and Law Journals)
- Stevie Swanson, Creatively Concealed but Persistently Pervasive: Racial Steering in American Real Estate 40 Wis. J.L. Gender & Soc’y 61 (2025).
- Stevie Swanson, The Metamorphoses of Racial Discrimination in American Real Estate, 42(2) LAW & INEQ. 183 (2024).
- Stevie Swanson, Indignity Perpetuated: Race-based Housing Post-Reconstruction to the Fair Housing Act’s Impact on the Digital Age: Where Do We Go from Here? 23 CONN. PUB. INT. L.J. 127 (2023).
- Stevie Swanson, Slavery Then and Now: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and Modern-Day Human Trafficking: What Can We Learn from our Past? 11 Florida A&M Law Review 127 (2015).
- Stevie Swanson, Sitting on Your Rights: Why the Statute of Limitations for Adverse Possession Should Not Protect Couch Potato Future Interest Holders, 12 Fla. Coastal L. Rev. 305 (2011).
Books and Chapters in Books
- "Aiming for Chocolate: Building a Student's Practice Skills in Property Law." In Teaching Law Practice: Preparing the Next Generation of Lawyers, 92-96 (Charles Cercone, Nelson P. Miller & Christopher R. Trudeau eds., Lake Mary, FL: Vandeplas Publishers LLC 2013).
Peer-reviewed Publications
- Stevie Swanson, “Residential” Might Not Mean What You Think: Pandharipande and Short Term Vacation Rentals, Dicta (Knox County Bar Association), vol. 52, no. 2 (February 2024), page 16.
- Stevie Swanson, Charging Children as Adults and its Disproportionate Effect on Minorities, Lawyer (Hillsborough County Bar Association), vol. 25, no. 4 (March-April 2015), page 46.
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Stevie Swanson, Human Trafficking and 32 Billion Reasons to Fight it, Lawyer (Hillsborough County Bar Association), vol. 24, no. 5 (March-April 2014), page 30.
Other Publications
- Stevie Swanson, Mot. of Law Professors to Participate as Amici Curiae and Br. in Opp'n to Defs.' Mot. to Dismiss, Gilbert v. U.S. Olympic Comm., October 24, 2018, No. 1:18-cv-00981 (D. Colo.) (Co-signer only)
- Stevie Swanson, WMU-Cooley Law Professors Give Advice to First Term Students (Contributing Author), cooleylawschoolblog (Oct. 4, 2018), https://info.cooley.edu/blog/wmu-cooley-law-professors-give-advice-to-first-term-students
- Stevie Swanson, Human Trafficking and the Darker Side of Major Sports Events, cooleylawschoolblog (Apr. 1, 2015, 5:00 PM), http://cooleylawschoolblog.com/2015/04/01/human-trafficking-and-the-darker-side-of-major-sports-events/.
- Stevie Swanson, More Help Needed for Human Trafficking Victims, Tampa Tribune, Sunday Op-Ed., July 27, 2014, at Views 3.