News

Chandler Cole ’25 and Lucas Lynn ’25 have won Duke Law’s 2024 Student Scholarly Writing Award for articles that offer a novel reading of the Constitution and propose solutions for a largely undocumented genre of art.  

Cole’s article Restoring the Citizenship of the Soldier: How the Constitutional Militia Disrupts Judicial Bias Against Servicemembers advocates an expansion of servicemembers’ rights through an analysis of the Army and Militia clauses.

"It is exceptionally difficult for a student note to take on a large and in large parts novel question of constitutional law and give it the sort of deeply thoughtful and original treatment that Chandler Cole’s work pulled off,” said Bernard M. Fishman Distinguished Professor Sam Buell, who nominated the paper.

“Highly commendable for not only hard-working execution but also courage and degree of difficulty.” 

Lynn’s article, Inside Outsider Art: Challenges for a Marginalized Genre, addresses an increasingly popular category of art that is beginning to enter museums and the secondary art market.  

“The type of art on which Lucas focuses is sorely underexplored in scholarly literature,” wrote nominator David F. Cavers Distinguished Professor Deborah DeMott, who teaches Art Law.

“Thus, the paper is of considerable value in documenting the genre and its circumstances, in rigorous fashion, for a legal and academic audience.”   

The winning articles, selected by faculty, are published in recent issues of Duke Law Journal. Cole is the journal’s senior notes editor and Lynn is a member of its editorial board.  

A new analysis that resists the siloing of military personnel  

While the papers deal with very different topics, both address challenges of groups that can be considered outside the mainstream. 

Cole’s article examines the historic basis for the unique legal status of U.S. military members, who are considered a “separate community” with significant restrictions on individual liberty and different legal rights and protections than civilians.  

"When I came into law school, I was quickly introduced to the legal concept of military deference," Cole said.

"I immediately found it odd that courts engaged so differently with military cases, even when there was no wartime justification. This paper was born of investigating the origins of that disparity."

Analyzing the Army and Militia clauses, Cole advocates a new reading of the history and text of the Constitution that views today’s armed forces in the context of the founding-era military and would give servicemembers legal protections more in line with the general populace.  

“With an eye toward preserving constitutional militia values that have been lost to modern jurisprudence, this Note attempts to recapture the importance of the military’s integration with larger American society,” Cole writes.  

“To do so, it contends that an army-only view of military rights overlooks the constitutional structure's central aim; that is, the “land and naval forces” understood as both armies and militia, protecting the military’s readiness but cementing legal protections for the citizens serving within its ranks.”

Cole is a West Point graduate and Army veteran who reached the rank of captain before entering Duke Law.

“Chandler’s work, in this paper and in other work of hers, displays (among its other virtues) her success at bringing her life experience into her work, both as inspiration and substantively, in a disciplined, intellectually responsible manner,” said Professor of Law Jeff Powell.  

“If she ultimately decides to pursue an academic career, she has the potential to become of the few first-rate legal scholars who approaches military issues with a strong ability to employ an internal perspective yet without allowing that to submerge an objective, critical stance.” 

Lynn proposes solutions for authenticating outsider art    

The features that make outsider art popular have also made it under-studied and under-protected, Lynn writes. Outsider artists typically do not have formal training and are not part of the mainstream art world, and much of the value of their work derives from the artist’s own story. Lynn opens with one such story – that of Bill Traylor, who was born into slavery and began creating art at age 85 but lay in an unmarked grave for nearly 70 years while his works sold at auction for handsome prices.  

The topic has personal relevance: Lynn grew up near Montgomery, Alabama, an area where Traylor and many of the artists mentioned in his paper lived, and a painting of Jesus on the cross by Mose Tolliver hung in the hallway of his childhood home. It was his first exposure to outsider art, he recalled. 

Lynn's paper addresses a central challenge of the genre: Because many outsider artists sell their work directly to collectors, not through dealers or galleries, pieces often lack documentation that will allow for authentication and attribution, as well as proper valuation, resolution of legal disputes, and recognition and compensation for artists and their estates.

Lynn ran into that problem himself as he began collecting pieces in the summer after his 1L year.  

“When I went to purchase art, whether at estate sales or at galleries, I encountered the same problems that I wrote about in my paper: little to no documentation, whispers of potential forgeries – especially around Mose Tolliver – and nothing to concretely rely on,” he said.  

“When I found one piece that also had a photo of Tolliver painting it attached, I had to have it. That moment stuck with me when I was choosing a topic.” 

Lynn's proposals include creating more catalogues raisonnés for outsider art – listings of all known works by an individual artist with identifying details. He also advocates increased support for institutions with an interest in the genre that could create such catalogues and assist artists with navigating the art market and securing proper placement and compensation for their work.

"Once the artist is gone, it can be challenging to document facts relevant to a work’s history and authenticity. The value placed on an artist’s story creates risks of fakery, as does the relatively easy-to-imitate fabrication of the work of many outsider artists," DeMott said.

“The paper advances a plausible policy proposal to address foreseeable issues going forward: interventions now to document the works and – when possible – their first sales, while the artist themselves or their first-generation descendants are still alive.”

Lynn said as the genre gains popularity and value in the mainstream art market, it deserves more academic and institutional support.

"By nature, outsider art can be incredibly difficult to authenticate, but with more support, institutions and scholars could address these challenges and prepare the art world for outsider art’s increasing popularity,” Lynn writes.

“No longer would an outsider artist like Bill Traylor have to lie in an unmarked grave for a period almost as long as his life. Instead, artists like Bill Traylor would be celebrated, hopefully during their lifetime, and appreciated as real artists, not just outsiders.”