Professor Thomas Cobb joined the UW law school faculty in 2004. Before joining the faculty, Professor Cobb clerked for Justice Susan M. Leeson at the Oregon Supreme Court and was an Assistant Attorney General in the Appellate Division at the Oregon Department of Justice.

Professor Cobb graduated from the University of Alabama magna cum laude and was a member of Phi Beta Kappa. After completing his master's degree in literature, rhetoric, and translation theory, he taught and studied in Colmar, France under an IIE-Fulbright Grant. He then received a University of Chicago Fellowship to study literature and art history and concentrated his studies on rhetoric and visual culture, earning an M.A. in comparative literature.

At the University of Minnesota Law School, he was a student director of the Legal Assistance to Minnesota Prisoners clinic and was involved in the redesign, expansion, and translation of the University of Minnesota Human Rights Library. He graduated magna cum laude and is a member of Order of the Coif.

Professor Cobb's current research interests include legal rhetoric, statutory interpretation, evidence, and criminal law. He is a member of the Rhetoric Society of America, the American Society for the History of Rhetoric, and the National Council of Teachers of English. He is admitted to practice before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.