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) and Property Tax Exemption for Charitable Nonprofit Organizations: A Uniform Possibility, 18 Wake Forest J. Bus. & Intell. Prop. L. 1 (2017). 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. (2022). She teaches contract law, nonprofit, business and tax exempt courses.

Professor Cherry served as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs from July 2014-June 2018 where she oversaw, developed, and managed the Law School 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 (rising to the rank of 15 nationally by USNWR 2023 among clinical programs at public universities) and the externship program.

Professor Cherry is a member of the American Law Institute (since 2012), is a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation and created the South Carolina Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts (SCVLA), in partnership with the South Carolina Commission on the Arts and the South Carolina Law School Pro Bono program.

Professor 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 and the Two Thumbs Up Award by Delta Alpha Pi Honor Society, University of South Carolina Student Disability Services.

Professor 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 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 (2022)
• SC Nonprofit Corporate Manual, South Carolina Bar Association, 3rd ed., chapters (forthcoming 2023)
• 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)