Historical Faculty

Jerome Culp joined the Duke Law faculty in 1985 after serving as a visiting professor in 1984.  In 1989 he became the first tenured professor of color at Duke Law.  Originally his interests focused on torts and economic analysis of law, but later expanded to include employment discrimination, black legal scholarship, and critical race theory.  Culp was the MacArthur Distinguished Visiting Scholar at what was then the Joint Center for Political Studies in Washington, D.C., and director of the John M. Olin Program in Law and Economics at Duke from 1989-1993. In 1999, he held the Charles Hamilton Houston Chair at North Carolina Central University.  While at Duke Culp was also a visiting professor at several other schools including the University of Michigan and the University of California at Berkeley.  In addition to his academic work he testified for civil rights plaintiffs in cases such as Evans v. Romer and Equality Foundation of Greater Cincinnati, Inc. v. City of Cincinnati.  Both cases challenged state and local amendments that sought to eliminate civil rights protections for gays, lesbians, and bisexuals.

Culp completed an A.B. in economics at the University of Chicago in 1972.  He earned both a masters degree in the same field in 1974 and a law degree in 1978 from Harvard.  While Culp was a law student he was senior editor of Harvard’s Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review.  After completing his degree he worked on youth employment and affirmative action with New York’s Rockefeller Foundation.  In 1980, he clerked for Judge Nathaniel R. Jones of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, and the following year he worked as an economist in the Carter Administration.  Also in 1981 he became an Assistant Professor of Law at Rutgers.  Culp died in 2004.

Sources:

Duke Law Professor Jerome Culp Dies at Age 53 [perma.cc/6NV6-F8U3], Duke Today (February 6, 2004)

Duke University, School of Law, Bulletin of Duke University School of Law [serial]

Trina Jones, In Memoriam Professor Jerome M. Culp, Jr. 1950-2004 [perma.cc/GRC7-75FG], 11 DJGLP i-iii (2004)