CLIFFORD ROSKYProfile page
Professor
College of Law
BIO
Clifford Rosky is a professor of law at the University of Utah's S.J. Quinney College of Law, where he teaches constitutional law, criminal law, and Mindful Lawyering, a course examining the relationship between the practice of meditation and the practice of law.
His current research applies empirical methods to the well-being of lawyers and law students, including an ongoing pilot study of first-year law students. Recent publications include "Measuring Lawyer Mental Illness: Evidence from Two National Surveys," 23 Journal of Empirical Legal Studies 60 (2026), and "Mindful Lawyering: A Pilot Study on Mindfulness Training for Law Students," 13 Mindfulness 2347 (2022), both peer-reviewed.
Rosky has practiced meditation for more than twenty five years, individually and on silent retreats. He is trained as a mindfulness facilitator by the UCLA Mindful Awareness Research Center and certified as such by the International Mindfulness Teachers Association. He serves on the Executive Committee of the Utah State Bar Well-Being Committee and the Advisory Board of the Mindfulness in Law Society, and previously served on the Executive Committee of the Association of American Law Schools Section on Balance & Well-Being in Legal Education.
Rosky's earlier scholarship and advocacy centered on LGBTQ rights. He is a two-time recipient of the Dukeminier Award, which recognizes the best legal scholarship on sexuality and gender published each year, and in 2015 he received the Equality Award from the Human Rights Campaign. He helped draft, negotiate, and secure the passage of five Utah laws protecting LGBTQ people from bullying, conversion therapy, hate crimes, and discrimination in education, employment, and housing. He served as an expert witness and counsel of record in the country's first lawsuits successfully challenging the constitutionality of statewide anti-LGBTQ curriculum laws, in Arizona, South Carolina, and Utah, and on the federal expert panel revising the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration's report on ending conversion therapy.
INSTITUTIONAL APPOINTMENTS
- ProfessorCollege of Law1 Jul 2013 - present
ACADEMIC POSITIONS
- Associate ProfessorUniversity of Utah, College of Law1 Jul 2008 - 30 Jun 2013
DEGREES
- JD, LawYale Law School2001
- BA, summa cum laude, LawAmherst College