V.
Teaching & Scholarship
Six Decades at the Lectern
A teaching career that opened doors at three southern law schools and shaped fifty years of Maryland lawyers — from Charlottesville and Oxford to Baltimore and Aberdeen.
A Half-Century at Maryland
Longest-serving professor.
Since 1974, Larry Gibson has held a faculty appointment at the University of Maryland School of Law — a tenure unmatched in the school’s history. Generations of Maryland attorneys, prosecutors, judges, and elected officials passed first through his classroom.
1972–1974
University of Virginia School of Law
First Black law professor
Joined the Charlottesville faculty as the law school's first Black professor, teaching constitutional and civil procedure.
1974–2025
University of Maryland School of Law
Longest-serving law professor
Half a century at the front of the classroom — the longest tenure in the school's history. Mentor to thousands of Maryland attorneys, judges, and public servants.
1975
University of Mississippi School of Law
First Black law professor at Ole Miss
Walked the Oxford campus as the first Black law professor in the school's history — a quiet but historic appointment in the Deep South.
1996
University of Aberdeen, Scotland
Visiting Professor of Law
A visiting appointment that broadened his scholarship beyond American constitutional traditions and produced lasting transatlantic friendships.
2015
North Carolina Central University
Charles Hamilton Houston Chair
Holder of the one-year endowed chair, delivering presentations on the legacy of Houston and the architecture of civil rights litigation.
Beyond the Classroom
Scholarship & profession-shaping
- Young Thurgood (1998). Gibson’s landmark biography of Justice Thurgood Marshall’s Baltimore years — issued by Prometheus and now a foundational text in civil rights history.
- Multistate Bar Examination.Helped draft the national bar examination as a member of the drafting committee from 1976 to 1987 — quietly shaping the standard by which a generation of attorneys were licensed.
- American Academy of Judicial Education.Faculty member from 1972 to 1976, training sitting judges in newly developing areas of constitutional and procedural law.
