Mary J. Davis was named Dean of the University of Kentucky J. David Rosenberg College of Law effective Jan. 1, 2021, after serving as interim dean.

Dean Davis has been on the UK Rosenberg Law faculty since 1991. She joined the faculty after six years of a products liability litigation defense practice for the law firms of Womble, Carlyle, Sandridge & Rice in Winston-Salem, North Carolina and McGuire, Woods, Battle, & Boothe in Richmond, Virginia. Her experience, which involved management of nationwide litigation, has informed her scholarship in the field of products liability.

She was selected in 2016 as University Research Professor from the College of Law. She is co-author of the widely adopted law school textbook Products Liability and Safety: Cases and Materials (7th ed. 2015) (including the annual case supplement and Teacher's Manual). She is also a co-author of the leading multi-volume products liability treatise, Owen and Davis, Products Liability Law (4th ed. 2014) (West Publishing). Her articles have appeared in such journals as the Hasting Law Journal, Boston College Law Review, the University of Pittsburgh Law Review, the Wake Forest Law Review, and the Tennessee Law Review. Her recent work on federal preemption of state products liability laws has been cited by the United States Supreme Court.

She has been a visiting professor of law at the University of Texas School of Law, Boston College Law School, William and Mary College of Law and Wake Forest University School of Law. Dean Davis is quoted in the national press on subjects of products liability and mass tort litigation. She is a 1985 magna cum laude graduate of the Wake Forest University School of Law, where she served as Managing Editor of the Law Review, and a 1979 cum laude graduate of the University of Virginia. She is an elected member of the American Law Institute where she has served on the Members Consultative Groups for the Restatement (Third) of Torts and Aggregate Litigation Project.