Cynthia Nicoletti, a scholar of American legal history, joined the Duke Law School faculty in July 2026. Previously she was the Paul G. Mahoney Research Professor of Law and Professor of History at University of Virginia School of Law, where she served on the faculty since 2014.
Nicoletti’s work focuses on the Civil War and Reconstruction era and its constitutional legacies. She has won numerous fellowships and grants and published articles and essays in both legal and historical journals, includingVirginia Law Review, Buffalo Law Review, Law and History Review, the Journal of Supreme Court History and the Journal of the Civil War Era. Her first book, Secession on Trial: The Treason Prosecution of Jefferson Davis (Cambridge University Press, 2017), won the Cromwell Book Prize.
Nicoletti’s interdisciplinary scholarship examines the role of lawyers, judges, and legal arguments and institutions in shaping how the U.S. reckoned with its most significant rupture and responded to fundamental questions it raised, such as nationhood, state sovereignty, and secession; race, emancipation, and the rights of formerly enslaved people; civil liberties; and treason. Her recent work focuses on Reconstruction-era land policy and the property rights of freed people.
Nicoletti earned her JD from Harvard Law School and her bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees in history from the University of Virginia.
