Mitchell Hamline School of Law

About Mitchell Hamline School of Law

President and Dean

Camille M. Davidson

Committed to helping students find their purpose through legal education

A native of Oxford, Mississippi, Davidson earned a bachelor’s degree from Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi, and a J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center. She spent the first 13 years of her career as a practicing attorney, working in the public sector and also in private practice. In 2004, she began a transition to education as an adjunct at Davidson College, followed by stints at Charlotte School of Law and Wake Forest University School of Law. In 2020, she became dean at Southern Illinois University Simmons Law School. In 2024, Davidson became the third president and dean at Mitchell Hamline School of Law and the first Black woman to serve as president and dean at Mitchell Hamline or any of its predecessor schools.

Camille Davidson Facts

Hometown: Born and raised in Oxford, Miss.

Family: Husband Trevor Fuller, son Jackson, daughter Schuyler

J.D.
Georgetown University Law Center

Postgraduate Rotary International Ambassadorial Scholar
University of Nairobi, Nairobi, Kenya, East Africa

B.A.
Millsaps College, Jackson, Miss.

President and Dean Camille M. Davidson’s First 125 Days

Camille Davidson

“True access to justice means that we’re able to train people from their communities so that they’re able to go back to their community and serve those communities. And Mitchell Hamline does such an amazing job of doing that.”
Biography and bibliography

The draw to Mitchell Hamline

Davidson saw in Mitchell Hamline “the best of two things that were important to me”—a trusted source of legal talent for the state and region as well as the national leader in innovative approaches to legal education. She called blended learning “the cutting edge of the future of legal education that has extended access to many who would have had no other way to earn a J.D. So many schools are trying to figure out how to do hybrid and online delivery of legal education, but the blended program to me is the standard which so many other law schools are looking at as a how-to manual.”

The other strong draw to Mitchell Hamline was the chance to lead an independent law school. After learning the fundamentals of legal teaching and administration at Charlotte Law and then leading a law school at SIU but within the larger university system, she’s excited by the opportunity to lead a freestanding law school, in partnership with the board of trustees, especially one committed to making it possible for all kinds of people from all kinds of backgrounds, geographies, and life situations to figure out their own “why” through the study of law.

Finding the Why: A profile of Camille Davidson

Camille Davidson in the news