We Are History in the Making: Alum Teresa Wynn Roseborough

TERESA WYNN ROSEBOROUGH

Sr. Chief Litigation Counsel

MetLife

Teresa Wynn Roseborough (born November 28, 1958) is an American lawyer, a former Deputy Assistant Attorney General during the Clinton administration and is the current Senior Chief Litigation Counsel at MetLife, where she leads a department of sixty-two associates and supervises MetLife’s litigation activities worldwide.

A native of Memphis, Roseborough earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Virginia in 1980 and a master's degree in education from Boston University in 1983. She then earned her law degree with high honors from the University of North Carolina School of Law in 1986, where she also served as Editor-in-Chief of the North Carolina Law Review. From 1986 until 1987, Roseborough worked as a law clerk for U.S. Court of Appeals Judge James Dickson Phillips, Jr., and from 1987 until 1988, Roseborough worked as a law clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens. In 1994, Roseborough took a job with the U.S. Department of Justice as a Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel. Roseborough commuted to Washington from Atlanta under an arrangement signed off on by then-Attorney General Janet Reno.

After her clerkships, Roseborough worked for the law firm Sutherland Asbill & Brennan LLP as an associate for five years and eventually became a partner. In 2003, Ms. Roseborough was chosen by American Lawyer magazine as one of the forty-five highest-performing members of the private bar under the age of forty-five in the magazine’s cover story feature, "45 Under 45." Ms. Roseborough has served on the Executive Committees of the State Bar of Georgia’s Appellate Section, the ABA Council of Appellate Lawyers, and the U.S. Supreme Court Historical Society, which selected her in 2002 to re-argue the famous case of Gibbons v. Ogden (1824) before Justice Scalia, as a part of its National Heritage Lecture. She also has served as a member of the State Bar of Georgia’s Board of Bar Examiners.

While still a partner at Sutherland Asbill, Roseborough in late 2005 was identified as one of three finalists to become the dean of the University of North Carolina School of Law. The other finalists were Dave Douglas and Erwin Chemerinsky. Roseborough and Chemerinsky later withdrew as candidates, and the school ultimately wound up selecting John "Jack" Boger.

In 2006, Roseborough joined MetLife as its Chief Litigation Counsel. She also has served on the board of directors of the American Constitution Society. In addition to serving on the Board of Directors of the American Constitution Society, Ms. Roseborough has served as a member of the Board of Advisors for the Center for Civil Rights at the University of North Carolina and of the Board of Directors for the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights.

In July 2007, Tom Goldstein of the legal blog SCOTUSblog speculated that Roseborough was a likely nominee to a federal appeals court in a Democratic presidential administration. Goldstein also identified Roseborough as a likely nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court by a Democratic president after a short stint on a federal appeals court. Shortly after President Obama's election, Roseborough was also mentioned by several prominent sources as a potential nominee to serve as U.S. Solicitor General, although that position was eventually filled by former Harvard Law School Dean Elena Kagan.

Teresa is the wife of alum Joseph Roseborough and has a daughter, Courtney.