Prof. Vickie Sutton

Associate Dean for Digital Learning and Graduate Education; Paul Whitfield Horn Distinguished Professor, 2010-; Robert H. Bean Professor of Law, 1999-2010.

Victoria Sutton is the Paul Whitfield Horn Distinguished Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Biodefense, Law and Public Policy, the only center at a law school in the U.S. to focus solely on issues of law and biodefense, biosecurity and bioterrorism. She established the Law and Science Certificate Program with unanimous support of the faculty, and directs the JD/MS Program in Environmental Toxicology; Biotechnology; Agriculture and Applied Economics and the JD/MEng.

Prof Sutton received the Horn Distinguished Professor honor in 2010, the highest honor that can be bestowed on a faculty member at Texas Tech University. She served as the Chief Counsel for the Research and Innovative Technology Administration, U.S. Department of Transportation in Washington, D.C., 2005-2007. She served as Assistant Director in the Office of Science and Technology Policy, also known as the White House Science Office, 1991-1993.

Prof. Sutton was awarded the university-wide President’s Book Award for her groundbreaking casebook Law and Science: Cases and Materials. She was awarded the New Faculty Teaching Award in 2001, and the Law School’s Distinguished Research Faculty Award. She has chaired the University Academic Strategic Planning Task Force and the Texas Tech University System Task Force on Anti-Terrorism and Public Security.

She is an enrolled member of the Lumbee Indian Tribe of North Carolina and served as Secretary of the National Native American Bar Association in 2001-2002, and currently serves as a founding member of the National Congress of American Indians Policy Research Center, Advisory Board.

Dr. Sutton has also served on Committees of the Institute of Medicine and National Academy of Engineering. In 2005, she received the Distinguished Alumni Award from Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA, where she received her MPA, and was nominated for the Alumni Achievement Award at the University of Texas at Dallas, where she received her PhD.
She is an appointee to the Texas Governor, Greg Abbott’s Task Force on Infectious Diseases.

Dr. Sutton has published ten books, more than fifty law review articles, and numerous scholarly articles on law and technology, science, environmental law, American Indian law, Constitutional law and biosecurity law.