andré douglas pond cummings is Dean and Professor of Law at the Widener University Commonwealth Law School having begun his deanship in June 2024. He was formerly Associate Dean for Faculty Development and the Charles C. Baum Professor of Law at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock William H. Bowen School of Law where he taught Business Associations, Contracts I and II, Corporate Justice, Entertainment Law, Policing & the Use of Force, Progressive Prosecution, and Hip Hop & the American Constitution. Dean cummings was also Co-Founder and Co-Director of Bowen Law’s Center for Racial Justice and Criminal Justice Reform. Dean cummings was previously a Professor of Law at West Virginia University College of Law and has been a Visiting Professor at numerous law schools. Before embarking on his academic career, cummings worked as a judicial law clerk for Chief Judge Joseph W. Hatchett of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit and for Chief Justice Christine M. Durham of the Utah Supreme Court. In addition, he practiced law at Kirkland & Ellis LLP in Chicago IL, focusing his practice on complex business transactions including mergers, acquisitions, divestitures and securities offerings of publicly traded companies. Simultaneously, cummings represented clients in the sports and entertainment industries, including athletes in the National Football League and Professional Bull Riders, record labels, motion picture production companies, and a variety of authors, including Hollywood screenwriters.  

 Dean cummings has written extensively on issues regarding investor protection, racial and social justice, and sports and entertainment law, publishing in the Washington University Law Review, Indiana Law Journal, Utah Law Review, Tulane Law Review, Case Western Reserve Law Review, Howard Law Journal, Thurgood Marshall Law Review and Harvard Journal on Racial and Ethnic Justice, amongst many others.  cummings has published three books including Corporate Justice (with Todd Clark) in 2016, Hip Hop and the Law (with Pamela Bridgewater and Donald Tibbs) in 2015, and Reversing Field: Examining Commercialization, Labor, Gender, and Race in 21^st Century Sports Law (with Anne Marie Lofaso) in 2010. cummings is currently working on his fourth book, Ending the Racialized War on Drugs: Repairing Victimized Communities (with Steven Ramirez), to be published by the Cambridge University Press in 2025. Noted public intellectual Cornel West has stated that cummings’ scholarly “reputation goes far beyond the nation, and is heard in every corner of the globe, wrestling with legacies of legal thinking on one hand and popular culture on the other.”

cummings has been recognized as Professor of the Year on numerous occasions including the University-wide Distinguished Professor Award by the West Virginia University Foundation. He has recently received three Faculty Excellence Awards at the William H. Bowen School of Law including in Social Justice, Research & Scholarship, and Public Service. cummings has taught as a Visiting Professor of Law at the University of Iowa College of Law, University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law, Syracuse University College of Law, The University of Illinois—Chicago Law School, Temple University Beasley School of Law (Tokyo Campus) and has taught as a Visiting Lecturer at the North Carolina Central University School of Law, St. Thomas University School of Law, Fundação Getulio Vargas, Direito Rio in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Universidade de Vila Velha in Vila Velha, Brazil, and Universidad de Guanajuato in Guanajuato, Mexico. cummings holds a JD from Howard University School of Law where he graduated cum laude.

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