Background

Jaclyn Cherry is a leading expert in nonprofit and tax exempt law.  She served as an advisor for the American Law Institute’s Restatement of the Law of Charitable Nonprofit Organizations and has authored several nonprofit tax exempt articles including Nonprofit Governance: Who Should Be Watching? A Look at State, Federal and Dual Regulation, 13 Ohio St. Bus. L.J. 145 (2019). She co-authored several texts including the 3rd edition of her casebook Tax Exempt Organizations: Cases and Materials (2014) and Understanding Nonprofit and Tax Exempt Organizations, 3rd ed., Carolina Academic Press (forthcoming 2022). She teaches nonprofit, business and tax exempt courses.

Cherry served as associate dean for academic affairs from July 2014 to June 2018 where she oversaw and managed the School of Law's curriculum and all academic programs and services. She served as director of Clinical Legal Education from July 2019 to April 2022, overseeing eight in-house clinics (ranked 15^th nationally among clinical programs at public universities in the 2023 US News and World Report Best Law School rankings) and the externship program.

Cherry currently serves on the advisory board of the Nelson Mullins Riley Scarborough Center on Professionalism; is a member of the American Law Institute (since 2012); and created the South Carolina Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts (SCVLA), in partnership with the South Carolina Commission on the Arts and the School of Law's Pro Bono program.   She served as chair of the hiring committee for the Veterans Legal Clinic director and served as co-chair of the Governance Review Committee of the Clinical Legal Education Association of the American Association of Law Schools. She was president of the board of the Bethlehem Project, and a board member of Pittsburgh Neighborhood Legal Services and Redstone Highlands Presbyterian Seniorcare.

Cherry won the G.G. Dowling Faculty Award given by the University of South Carolina School of Law to a faculty member who typifies to fellow faculty outstanding qualities of integrity, concern for others, and legal scholarship.  

Her presentations include “Nonprofit Board of Director Governance” for the Advanced Leadership Academy in cooperation with the Initiative on Social Enterprise at the Harvard Business School.  She is a fellow of the American Bar Foundation. 

Cherry was a visiting professor at the University of San Diego School of Law and served as associate director of Clinical Legal Education, director of the Economic & Community Development Law Clinic, and clinical professor of law at Duquesne University School of Law. She has practiced law and served as general counsel to several nonprofit organizations.

Teaching

• Contracts (LAWS 504)
• Nonprofit Organizations (LAWS 717)
• Nonprofit Organizations Clinic (LAWS 716)
• Small Business Organization Capstone Course (LAWS 561)

Scholarship

Books

• Understanding Nonprofit and Tax Exempt Organizations, 3rd ed., Carolina Academic Press (forthcoming 2022)
• SC Nonprofit Corporate Manual, South Carolina Bar Association, 3rd ed., chapters (forthcoming 2022)
• Tax Exempt Organizations: Cases and Materials, LexisNexis 3d ed. (2014)

Articles

• Nonprofit Governance: Who Should be Watching? A Look at State, Federal and Dual Regulation, 13 Ohio St. Bus. L.J. 145 (2019)
• Commercial Activity and the Operational Test, 29 Tax’n Exempts 9 (2018) (invited)
• Property Tax Exemption for Charitable Nonprofit Organizations: A Uniform Possibility, 18 Wake Forest J. Bus. & Intell. Prop. L. 1 (2017)
• ALI, Principles of the Law of Charitable Nonprofit Organizations, Chapter 3, Associate Reporter (2013)
• Charitable Organizations and Commercial Activity: A New Era, Will the Social Entrepreneurship Movement Force Change, 5 J. Bus. Entrepreneurship & L. 345 (2012)