Veronica Root Martinez joined the Duke Law faculty in 2022 from Notre Dame Law School, where she was a professor of law, the Robert & Marion Short Scholar, and Director of the Program on Ethics, Compliance & Inclusion. She holds a secondary (courtesy) appointment in the Fuqua School of Business in the Management and Organizations area. Outside of Duke, she is currently serving a four-year term on FINRA’s National Adjudicatory Council.
Martinez writes about and researches issues related to professional and organizational ethics, drawing on scholarship from the areas of ethics, compliance, corporate and securities law, workplace law, and equity and inclusion. She investigates the institutional mechanisms that organizations can utilize to (i) promote ethical norms within professional and organizational environments, (ii) improve long-term compliance with legal and regulatory requirements, and (iii) encourage the development of diversity and inclusion norms.
Martinez is one of the nation’s foremost experts on corporate compliance and is the nation’s leading academic expert on the role of monitors and monitorships. She has published or has work forthcoming in numerous leading law journals, including the Harvard Law Review, Columbia Law Review, Cornell Law Review, Virginia Law Review, Northwestern Law Review, The Yale Law Journal Forum, and The University of Chicago Law Review Online. Her book, BUILDING AN EFFECTIVE ETHICS AND COMPLIANCE PROGRAM, is forthcoming with Edward Elgar.
Martinez teaches a range of courses and is often asked to speak in front of industry groups and at a private firms. In particular, Martinez is a sought-after speaker on issues related to ethics and compliance initiatives at firms, as well as on diversity and inclusion efforts. At Duke, she has or is scheduled to teach Ethics & Professional Responsibility; Securities Litigation, Enforcement & Compliance; Contracts; as well as a range of Compliance courses. She is a co-author on the 5th Edition of a casebook on SECURITIES LITIGATION, ENFORCEMENT & COMPLIANCE, to which she contributed the compliance chapter. Her greatest professional joy is when her Contracts students begin to analyze cases like lawyers.
Martinez was the first Black woman to receive tenure at Notre Dame Law School and the first Black woman to be internally promoted to Full Professor at the University. The school’s Class of 2022 selected Martinez for the Distinguished Teaching Award and the Captain William O. McLean Faculty/Staff Award. The Class of 2021 selected Martinez as the recipient of the Captain William O. McLean Faculty/Staff Award. In 2020, 2019, 2017 and 2015, the Notre Dame Black Law Students Association presented Martinez with the Charles F. Crutchfield Professorial Award. Additionally, Martinez was the 2020 recipient of the Notre Dame Black Law Students Association’s Rebecca B. Ward Appreciation Award.
Prior to her teaching career, she was a clerk on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and an attorney at Gibson Dunn in Washington, D.C. She is a graduate of the University of Chicago Law School and Georgetown University, where she majored in Management and Marketing.
