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.
Gordon writes for Inside Higher Education on the effects of instructor bias in the classroom and how to remedy it
In a commentary for Inside Higher Education, “Debias Yourself to Debias Your Teaching,” Clinical Professor Anne Gordon discusses the effects of instructor bias in the classroom and gives fellow academics practical tips on how to identify and mitigate their own potential biases.
The piece is based on Gordon's recent paper, "Better Than Our Biases: Using Psychological Research to Inform Our Approach to Inclusive, Effective Feedback," in which she researches cognitive and implicit bias to provide a number of techniques, including the use of rubrics, that faculty can use to create an inclusive learning environment and provide students with effective feedback.
"If you find that some students consistently struggle in your class, consider whether you could be contributing to that lack of success through your own biases (both your implicit bias and the related confirmation bias), your failure to give the necessary support to your underrepresented students, and your lack of defined metrics for success," Gordon writes. "Something can be done, and it’s up to us to do it."
Griffin writes that the pioneering Supreme Court Justice still has much to teach about civility and fairness
Professor Lisa Kern Griffin recent essay, “Sandra Day O'Connor's 'First' Principles: A Constructive Vision for an Angry Nation,” posits that the first woman named to the Supreme Court may be America’s last universally admired person.
In a conversation with Duke Law Magazine Griffin, who clerked for O'Connor during the Court’s 1997-98 term, says that while the state of today's civic discourse would be dismaying to the retired Justice, she would also chart a way forward as she did in her jurisprudence, including 1989's Webster v. Reproductive Health Services case that prevented the Court from overruling Roe v. Wade. Personally, too, she provided a model of civility and respectfulness that those seeking to bridge a polarized nation would do well to emulate, Griffin says.
"She was the right person to handle the challenges of being “first,” and she would make enormous contributions to public life today too," she says. "She was entirely without grievance, had an enormous capacity to focus on essential information, worked tirelessly, and never thought a problem too big to handle forthrightly."