BATON ROUGE, La. (press release) – LSU Law has announced that Professors Bill Corbett and Del Wright Jr. are the inaugural faculty at the LSU Paul M. Hebert Law Center to be awarded the Cheney C. Joseph Endowed Professorship, which was established by family, friends, and colleagues of the late LSU Law alumnus and longtime faculty member.
Professor Corbett has been a member of the LSU Law faculty since 1991, with his teaching and scholarship focused primarily on labor and employment law, torts, and Louisiana civil procedure. He served as interim co-dean of LSU Law—alongside Joseph—and later interim dean from August 2015 to July 2016. He serves as executive director of the Louisiana Association of Defense Counsel and is a past executive director of the Louisiana Judicial College.
“Cheney Joseph was my faculty colleague for many years. I was privileged to serve with him for a short time as interim co-deans of the Law Center. He even let me run the lakes with him in the afternoons. He was my best friend,” Professor Corbett said. “I could receive no greater honor than holding the professorship named for him.”
Last year, Professor Corbett was one of just 36 faculty members to receive a 2024 University Faculty Award from LSU in recognition of his distinguished career. He also received the Excellence in Legal Scholarship Award from LSU Law in 2024. In addition to the Joseph Professorship, he holds the Frank L. Maraist Professorship, Wex S. Malone Professorship, and Rosemary Neal Hawkland Professorship at LSU Law.
Professor Wright, a former U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) prosecutor with the Tax Division and legal scholar whose research focuses on crypto and the regulation of blockchain technologies, joined the LSU Law faculty in the fall of 2024 as the Vinson & Elkins Endowed Professor of Law.
“I am deeply grateful to receive the incredible honor of this professorship,” Wright said, “and I am excited to continue contributing to LSU Law’s important mission.”
Professor Wright teaches in the areas of tax, finance, business, securities, entrepreneurship, and crypto and blockchain regulation. He began his academic career in 2010, following a distinguished legal career as an investment banker, federal prosecutor, and business and tax lawyer. At the DOJ, he prosecuted white-collar tax and fraud cases with the Tax Division and served on the Organized Crime and Drug Enforcement Task Force in Maryland, where he handled gang and drug-related prosecutions.
A Baton Rouge native, Cheney C. Joseph Jr. graduated from University High and earned his undergraduate degree at Princeton University before returning home to attend LSU Law. He graduated as a member of The Order of the Coif in 1969 and joined the LSU Law faculty three years later, teaching criminal law, criminal procedure, and evidence. Over the next four decades, he shared his incisive legal acumen, folksy stories and hypotheticals, and unmatched legal instincts with generations of students. Joseph passed away on Dec. 18, 2015.
For more information about LSU Law, visit law.lsu.edu.
