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 reports that, contrary to rhetoric, Republicans have led the majority of recent court packing attempts
In a commentary for The Washington Post, Professor Marin Levy discusses the recent controversy over court packing - the practice of expanding or contracting the size of a court for apparent political gain. While court packing has gained traction among some Democrats eager to restore ideological balance to the Supreme Court, Republicans have decried the practice as being against longstanding norms. However, in the recent article Packing and Unpacking State Courts, 61 Wm. & Mary L. Rev. 1121 (2020), Levy found that most of the efforts to pack states' highest courts have been by Republicans. This fact bears noting in the larger debate about court reform that President-elect Joe Biden has vowed to initiate, she says.
"There are deeper and lingering questions about the size, structure and function of all courts — questions that should be asked, even if the answers are not immediately clear," Levy says in her commentary. "And arguments over those questions must be informed not by what seems politically expedient but by what has already been politically attempted. The current Republican argument against court-packing simply ignores precedent that Republicans themselves set."
Garrett and Seale-Carlisle conclude that race matters when it comes to life without parole in North Carolina
In an op-ed for The News & Observer, L. Neil Williams, Jr., Professor of Law Brandon Garrett and Travis Seale-Carlisle, a post-doctoral fellow at the Wilson Center for Science and Justice, describe findings from their new report, Life Without Parole Sentencing in North Carolina, co-authored with Karima Modjadidi and Kristen Renberg '22.
The researchers studies characteristics of the more than 1,627 cases in which life without parole (LWOP) was imposed from 1995 to 2017 and found that fewer LWOP sentences are predicted to occur as the number of black victim homicides increase in a county, but no such relationship is found when considering the number of white victim homicides. Further, LWOP was imposed unequally across the state, with counties that had imposed LWOP sentences in the past more likely to continue to do so. Garrett and Seale-Carlisle conclude that such a system, with its racial and geographical inequities, "is as biased and unfair as it is simply indecent and wrong."