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.
In The News & Observer, Coleman opposes a North Carolina bill that would categorically ban transgender girls from sport
In an op-ed for The News & Observer, Professor Doriane Coleman and co-authors Juniper Eastwood and Martina Navratilova that NC House Bill 358, the Save Women’s Sports Act, is legally and scientifically flawed – and morally problematic.
The bill which, like others currently under discussion in state legislatures, would categorically ban transgender athletes from participating on girls' school sports teams, something the authors call broad, intrusive, and an exclusionary rule that is unnecessary to accomplishing institutional goals.
The authors, all members of the Women's Sports Policy Working Group, also object to the inclusion of their names in support of the legislation, saying it mischaracterizes their work to find a "middle way" between categorical exclusion of transgender girls and women and category-defeating disregard of sex-linked traits.
"Lawmakers who care about girls’ and women’s sport should consider legislation that provides for separate categories based on sex with reasonable accommodations to allow transgender girls to play in a way that doesn’t diminish competitive opportunities for non-transgender girls," they write. "We are happy to lend our names to the development of legislation that reflects these principles."
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."