Faculty & Research
The faculty of Duke Law School is made up of innovative and influential scholars who are also passionate, creative, and caring teachers.
Duke Law professors are leaders in a broad range of fields and highly regarded for their research, writing, and public service. A community of scholars, they are collegial, collaborative, and interdisciplinary, and many hold joint appointments or collaborate with colleagues in other Duke schools and departments.
They also care deeply about helping students learn, both in the classroom and beyond, devote substantial time to students' academic and professional development, and continue to celebrate successes and provide counsel through difficult times once students become practicing lawyers.
The deep and ongoing engagement of our faculty with the subjects that they study and teach and the students they mentor creates an intellectual excitement that is palpable in our classrooms and hallways and is the foundation for an atmosphere of collaboration and respect that defines our school culture.
Levy and Siegel testify before the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court
Professors Neil S. Siegel and Marin K. Levy testified at a meeting of the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States on July 20, conducted virtually and live-streamed to the public.
The commission’s purpose is to provide an analysis of the principal arguments in the contemporary public debate for and against Supreme Court reform, including an appraisal of the merits and legality of particular reform proposals, according to its website. Siegel and Levy testified on a panel focused on the Supreme Court’s composition.
In her written testimony, Levy sought to offer context by providing information about recent changes and attempts to change the size of state supreme courts, the subject of her recent paper Packing and Unpacking State Courts (61 William & Mary Law Review 1121-1158 (2020.)
Siegel's written testimony reviewed the constitutionality and justifications of court packing, as well as the negative effects on the perceived legitimacy of the Court that court packing might provoke. He noted that two other reform proposals – term limits for Justices and expanding and diversifying the federal courts of appeals – "would enhance both the legitimacy and the accountability of the federal court system as a whole."
President Joe Biden established the commission in April. Three Duke Law faculty were tapped to serve as commissioners: Walter E. Dellinger III, the Douglas B. Maggs Professor Emeritus of Law; Margaret H. Lemos, the Robert G. Seaks LL.B. ’34 Professor of Law; and David F. Levi, Levi Family Professor of Law and Judicial Studies and Director of the Bolch Judicial Institute. Duke Law alumni Jeff Peck T ‘79, a former senior lecturing fellow at the Law School, and Christopher Kang ’09 also testified at the commission's July 20 meeting.
Grunwald's "Wandering Officers" paper gains national attention in the conversation about police accountability
A paper co-authored by Associate Professor Ben Grunwald has earned wide notice in the national conversation over policing reform and accountability. "The Wandering Officer," published in the Yale Law Journal by Grunwald and University of Chicago law professor John Rappaport, was hailed in The New Yorker as "the first wide-scale analysis of officers ... who have lost employment at one law-enforcement agency and then found a new job at another."
The authors analyzed a data set of 98,000 full-time law-enforcement officers employed by nearly 500 different Florida agencies over 30 years. They found that officers fired by one department, sometimes for serious misconduct, who then find work at another agency were more likely than their peers “to be fired from their next job or to receive a complaint for a ‘moral character violation.’”
Grunwald has been interviewed by the BBC, Bloomberg Law, WRAL, and other outlets. In February, he and Rappaport wrote an op-ed on the viability of policing reform legislation for The Washington Post. Importantly, their findings form the basis for a bill introduced this term in the New York State Senate called the "Wandering Officers Act" that would prohibit hiring a police officer who was fired, left while under investigation or disciplinary action that could result in termination, or resigned while criminal charges were pending stemming from actions committed on duty from any other jurisdiction in the country.