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Duke Law School’s annual D.C. Summer Institute on Law and Policy will be taught online this July. The program is designed for undergraduates and working professionals who are considering law school, about to begin it, or simply interested in learning more about law and legal and political institutions.

Entering its eighth year, the institute aims to create a pipeline to law school for prospective students interested in careers in law or policymaking. U.S. Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Dana Remus, chief counsel for the Biden for President campaign, will once again join members of the Duke Law faculty to teach the courses, which will run in the evenings during two two-week sessions, July 6-16 and July 20-30. Students will also be invited to virtual presentations on applying to law school and pursuing various careers with a law degree.

“We are excited that the necessity to move the D.C. Summer Institute online will allow us to open enrollment up to students nationwide and internationally who might not otherwise be able to participate,” said Neil Siegel, the institute’s director. “With the cancellation of many summer programs, internships, and job opportunities due to Covid-19, we think what we have to offer will be particularly valuable this year.”

Siegel, the David W. Ichel Professor of Law and Professor of Political Science at Duke, has worked on several U.S. Supreme Court nominations in the U.S. Senate and served as a law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. He will teach courses introducing students to U.S. constitutional law and to legal reasoning. Professor Doriane Coleman, who specializes in teaching and scholarship related to law, culture, women, children, and medicine, will teach a new course on succeeding in law school for both prospective students and those who are starting in the fall.

“Professor Coleman is one Duke Law’s most effective and beloved teachers, and we are thrilled to have her join the institute faculty this year,” said Siegel.

David F. Levi, the Levi Family Professor of Law and Judicial Studies, will again co-teach a course with Lee and Remus on the ways that lawyers seek and show leadership in public service. Levi, the former dean of Duke Law School and former Chief U.S. District Judge for the Eastern District of California, is director of the Bolch Judicial Institute and the president of the American Law Institute.

Lee, who was first elected to the Senate in 2010, is Utah’s senior senator. He is a member of the Judiciary Committee and chairs the Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights Subcommittee. He also chairs the Energy and Natural Resources Committee’s Water and Power Subcommittee and sits on the Commerce Committee. In 2019, he became chairman of the Joint Economic Committee. A graduate of Brigham Young University and BYU’s School of Law, Lee served as a law clerk to Judge Dee Benson of the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah and twice clerked for Samuel A. Alito, Jr., once while Alito was a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and again when he became an associate justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. 

Remus was named the Biden campaign’s top lawyer in April 2019. During the final year of the Obama Administration, she served as deputy counsel for ethics and deputy assistant to the president. Prior to that, she was a faculty member at the University of North Carolina School of Law, where she specialized in legal and judicial ethics and the regulation of the legal profession. She was a visiting professor at Duke Law School in 2012. Remus, a graduate of Harvard College and Yale Law School, was also a Supreme Court clerk for Justice Alito and clerked for Judge Anthony J. Scirica of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.

Registration for the Duke Law D.C. Summer Institute on Law and Policy is now open at the institute’s web site. Current Duke undergraduates can receive a full-tuition scholarship, funded by the Provost’s office, for up to two classes in the Institute, available on a first-enrolled, first-served basis.