Historical Faculty

Joel Francis Paschal taught at Duke Law for over thirty years.  His primary teaching interests were civil procedure and federal courts but in his early years on the faculty he was an instructor on insurance and research and writing, and in later years he taught admiralty.  Paschal served a term as chairman of the Duke University Academic Council.  He was also chairman of both the North Carolina Advisory Committee to the Civil Rights Commission and the North Carolina General Statutes Commission.  Paschal was a visiting professor at UNC-Chapel Hill in 1956 and 1966.  His publications include a biography of Justice George Sutherland of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Paschal completed his undergraduate and law degrees at Wake Forest College in 1935 and 1938.  In 1940 he began studying politics at Princeton, but this work was interrupted by Paschal’s service in the Navy during World War II.  After the war he completed his doctorate and became the Research Director of the North Carolina Commission for the Improvement of the Administration of Justice.  Paschal practiced law with a Raleigh firm for five years before joining the Duke Law faculty in 1954.  He retired in 1986 and died in 1991.

Sources:

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

Obituaries, 8:2 Duke Law Magazine 59 (Winter 1991)