JoAnne Sweeny teaches Basic Legal Skills.  Prior to coming to Louisville, she was a Westerfield Fellow at Loyola University New Orleans College of Law where she taught legal research and writing as well as a seminar in comparative constitutional law. She also recently completed her PhD in law at Queen Mary, University of London. She graduated cum laude with a B.A. in Psychology and a B.A. in Criminology from the University of California at Irvine. After graduating Order of the Coif from the University of Southern California Law School, she clerked for the Honorable Ferdinand F. Fernandez at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Professor Sweeny then practiced as an employment litigator at Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP before venturing further into academia. While at Queen Mary, Professor Sweeny taught British constitutional law and legal writing skills to first year law students.

Professor Sweeny's research interests are wide-ranging but focus mainly on the problem of how law cannot keep up with technology or changing historical circumstances. Her current scholarly pursuits include international constitutional law, criminal law and legal history. Professor Sweeny's most recent research has focused on criminal law issues such potential constitutional challenges to the prosecution of teenagers under child pornography laws because they have "sexted" each other nude or erotic photos of themselves. Her most recent publication, "The United Kingdom's Human Rights Act: Using its Past to Predict its Future" is a comparative constitutional law piece that uses legal history techniques and social science theories such as Rational Choice Theory and Social Movement Theory to analyze the factors that led to the creation of the Human Rights Act in the UK and may also lead to its repeal in the near future. Her past articles have focused on emerging wage and hour problems that result from the practical problems of modern working situations, as well as the civil procedure issues inherent in the imposition of appellate sanctions for frivolous appeals.