Elizabeth Hayes Patterson is an Associate Professor of Law at the Georgetown University Law Center.  Before joining the Law Center faculty in 1980, Professor Patterson served as Chair of the D.C. Public Service (Utilities) Commission and was a Commissioner of the D.C. Public Service Commission. At Georgetown, she teaches Conflict of Laws, Contracts, Race and American Law, and Commercial Law: Sales Transactions. From 2005 until 2007, she served as the Deputy Director of the Association of American Law Schools, headquartered in Washington, D.C.  From 1993-97, she served as Associate Dean for the JD and Graduate Programs at the Law Center, with responsibility for the supervision of academic programs, including curriculum development, full-time and adjunct faculty, and the Registrar's Office, as well as student affairs. In 2001, she received the Law Center's Frank F. Flegal Teaching Award.

In 2006, she became the first woman to receive an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Toulouse in southern France; in 2008, she received an Honorary Doctor of Laws from her alma mater, Emmanuel College, in Boston, Massachusetts.  She has been Treasurer of the D.C. Bar and a member of the Secretary of State's Advisory Committee on Private International Law (the Study Group on the Law Applicable to International Sales), the D.C. Bar Screening Committee, and the Editorial Board of the Washington Lawyer. She currently serves on the Board of Trustees of Emmanuel College, the National Crittenton Foundation, and Our Place, D.C.

Before becoming involved in public service, she practiced privately with the D.C. firm of Hogan & Hartson and taught Conflicts at Catholic University. After graduation from the Columbus School of Law at Catholic University, she served as a clerk for the Honorable Ruggero J. Aldisert of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree with distinction from Emmanuel College and studied French at the Sorbonne in Paris and at Stanford University, as a Woodrow Wilson Fellow. 

Professor Patterson ("Ginger") is a member of the American Law Institute and has written articles on both domestic and international law regulating the sale of goods. 

She is married to Jerome A. Patterson and has two grown children, Sala and Malcolm.