Professor Rowley graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Baylor University, majoring in economics and political science.  After earning his M.P.P. from Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, he returned to Baylor to teach economics and public policy.  He earned his J.D. from the University of Texas School of Law, where he served as executive editor of the Texas Law Review and as a judicial intern to then-Texas Supreme Court Justice Lloyd A. Doggett.  Following a clerkship with Judge Thomas M. Reavley of the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, he practiced law in Houston for five years, with an emphasis on commercial litigation in federal and state trial and appellate courts.

Professor Rowley taught at Mississippi College School of Law and Emory University School of Law before joining the Boyd School of Law faculty in 2001.  He spent the 2007-08 academic year as the Charles E. Tweedy, Jr. Visiting Chairholder at The University of Alabama School of Law.  He was appointed a William S. Boyd Professor of Law in 2008.

Teaching

Professor Rowley's current and recent teaching areas are Bankruptcy and Other Forms of Debt Collection, Contract Theory & Policy, Contracts, Economics and the Law, Payment Systems, Sales & Leases (including international and electronic sales), and Secured Transactions.  He also organizes and hosts the Law and Popular Culture Film Series, which he inaugurated in October 2003, for which he frequently leads the post-film discussions, and from which he is developing a course that will encompass art, film, literature, music, theater, and other forms of popular culture — past, present, and future.

Professor Rowley has published teaching materials to accompany three leading undergraduate and MBA-level Business Law texts.  He also writes interactive lessons for the Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction (CALI).

Scholarship

Professor Rowley currently writes primarily in the areas of contract law, commercial law, and law and popular culture.  He has previously written several articles on state securities law.  His recent articles and essays have appeared or will soon appear in the Baylor Law Review, Business Lawyer, University of Cincinnati Law Review, Emory Law Journal, Law & History Review, Media & Arts Law Review, Michigan Law Review, Mississippi Law Journal, Nevada Law Journal, Nevada Lawyer, SMU Law Review, South Texas Law Review, Uniform Commercial Code Law Journal, and Willamette Law Review.  He is the author of Questions & Answers: Contracts (LexisNexis 2003 & 1st rev. ed. 2006), two chapters for Howard O. Hunter's Modern Law of Contracts (West 3d ed. rev. 2007), a forthcoming volume of the Revised Edition of Corbin on Contracts (LexisNexis forthcoming 2009), Questions & Answers: Sales, Leases, and Electronic Contracts (LexisNexis forthcoming 2009), Inside Secured Transactions: What Matters and Why? (Aspen forthcoming 2009), and a chapter in Lawyers in Your Living Room: Law on the Small Screen (ABA Press forthcoming 2008), and is a co-author of Global Issues in Contract Law (West 2007), Understanding Sales and Leases of Goods (LexisNexis 2d ed. forthcoming 2009), and the 2005 and 2007 cumulative supplements to Howard O. Hunter's Modern Law of Contracts.

In the cybersphere, Professor Rowley is a contributing editor of the Law Professors' Blog Network's ContractsProf Blog and is one of the founding contributors to the Jurisdynamics Network's Commercial Law blog.  He also contributes to the Pace Institute of International Commercial Law's CISG Database — the leading U.S.-based resource for academics, judges, practitioners, and students interested in the U.N. Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG).

Service

Professor Rowley is an elected member of the American Law Institute and serves on the Members Consultative Groups for the UCC Article 9 Review Committee and the Principles of the Law of Software Contracts.

Professor Rowley serves on the Executive Committees of the Association of American Law Schools' Section on Commercial and Related Consumer Law and Section on Contracts.  He is the Developments Reporter for the American Bar Association Section of Business Law's Uniform Commercial Code Committee, having recently completed a three-year term as co-chair of the Sale of Goods Subcommittee, and is an officer in the American Bankruptcy Institute's UCC Committee.

During the 2005 legislative session, Professor Rowley advised the Nevada Senate Judiciary Committee regarding proposals to revise Nevada's Uniform Commercial Code.  He has consulted with legislators, state bar leaders, and other interested parties regarding efforts to revise UCC Article 1 in Connecticut, Florida, Indiana, Montana, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, and Wisconsin.  His periodic legislative updates on the 2001 revision to UCC Article 1, the 2003 amendments to UCC Articles 2 and 2A, the 2002 amendments to UCC Articles 3 and 4, and the 2003 revision to UCC Article 7 — which he maintains on this web site and about which he posts on one or both of his blogs and on several e-mail list serves — provide additional service to the practicing and academic bars and to the broader legal community.

Professor Rowley edits the Social Science Research Network's UNLV William S. Boyd School of Law Legal Studies Research Paper Series.  Until early 2007, he maintained the law school's Faculty Publications list and periodically published the BSL Faculty News, which he launched in October 2002.