Vanderbilt Law School Background Image

Phillip Cramer

Adjunct Professor of Law
Managing Member, Sherrard Roe Voight & Harbison

Phil Cramer specializes in plaintiff’s recovery cases in the field of antitrust. As an attorney in private practice, he has assisted corporate claimants in obtaining recoveries that have totaled nearly $1 billion. He also represents clients in commercial litigation matters, including insurance coverage, false claims, property rights and complex business disputes. Professor Cramer also represents clients pro bono in high-profile civil rights cases, having brought cases to vindicate immigrant rights, women’s rights, voting rights, privacy rights, prisoner rights, death penalty relief and marriage equality. He has been recognized for his pro bono legal work with the Tennessee Bar Association’s Harris Gilbert Pro Bono Attorney of the Year Award and the ACLU-TN Benjamin Pressnell Award. Before joining Sherrard Roe Voigt & Harbison, Cramer worked as a trial attorney in the Honors Program of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division.

Immediately after earning his law degree in 2000, Cramer served as a law clerk to Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Cramer was a John Wade Scholar at Vanderbilt Law School, where he served as senior articles editor for the Vanderbilt Law Review and was inducted into the Order of the Coif. He earned his undergraduate degree at the University of Richmond summa cum laude and received the Mace Award, the university’s top award. He was a Rhodes Scholar finalist.

Cramer is the author or co-author of three books. His most recent book, The Fight for Marriage: Church Conflicts and Courtroom Contests (Abingdon Press, 2018), co-authored with attorney Bill Harbison, recounts their representation of three same-sex couples seeking to have their legal marriages in other states recognized in Tennessee. The cases were ultimately consolidated with similar cases filed in Ohio, Kentucky and Michigan. Cramer is also the author of Deep Environmental Politics and Rethinking Environmental Protection.

Courses