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.
Fletcher calls for systematized disclosure of workforce demographics to help corporations set and achieve racial equity goals
Following the killing of George Floyd in summer 2020, many corporations issued public statements of support for Black Lives Matter and other social justice movements. But many of those gestures amounted to little more than marketing, says Professor Gina-Gail S. Fletcher, a corporate law scholar.
In their essay “Equality Metrics,” published in June on Yale Law Journal Forum, Fletcher and co-author Veronica Root Martinez of Notre Dame Law School, call on corporations to take meaningful steps to identify and address racial bias and discrimination within their organizations, including the systematic disclosure of workforce and supply chain demographics. They offer five specific, measurable steps firms can enact to identify and eliminate inequality and they argue that, because of the financial leverage they hold, large institutional investors are ideally positioned to demand these changes from the companies they invest in.
Fletcher says companies often point to diversification of their corporate boards as an indicator of progress in racial equity - but that isn't necessarily the best marker. "If [companies] have to disclose information about what your employee workforce looks like, potentially that is going to show that you may have two or three people of color on your board, but what does it mean for your workforce and your supply chain and thinking more deeply about the problems? Do you have the same percentages reflected in the workforce? And if you do, what does it look like at each level? Are your workers of color just in the lowest category? What do they look like at senior levels, senior management? What does it look like throughout your structure? That’s the information that we are saying firms should gather and disclose."
Center for Firearms Law scholars highly cited in closely watched Second Amendment case
Scholarship by Duke Center for Firearms Law faculty is cited in a quarter of the 84 briefs filed in a major gun rights case before the Supreme Court, demonstrating the center’s emergence as a leading source on Second Amendment issues.
And of briefs filed in support of the respondent, a full 60% cite articles, essays, and other writings by Lanty L. Smith ’67 Professor Joseph Blocher and Melvin G. Shimm Professor of Law and Associate Dean Darrell Miller, who are faculty co-directors of the center.
In New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn., Inc. v. Bruen, the first gun rights case to be decided since 2008’s District of Columbia v. Heller, the Court will rule on the constitutionality of New York’s “proper cause” law regulating handgun carry licenses. A total of 84 amicus briefs were submitted ahead of Nov. 3 oral arguments in the closely watched case.
With Eric Ruben, a professor at SMU Dedman School of Law, Blocher and Miller also submitted a “Brief of Second Amendment Law Professors” in support of neither party. In it, they focus on a broader issue that is expected to be addressed by the Court’s ruling: whether the two-part test that courts currently apply in evaluating the constitutionality of a challenged gun regulation should be replaced by the “text, history, and tradition” framework, which holds a gun regulation as constitutional if it has an historical precedent. Blocher, Miller, and Ruben urge the court to affirm the more nuanced two-part test as “the proper doctrinal framework to adjudicate Second Amendment claims.” The case was heard Nov. 3; a ruling is expected in mid-2022.