Videos

Professor Theresa Newman—the Charles S. Rhyne Clinical Professor of Law, co-founder and co-director of the Wrongful Convictions Clinic, and a leader in the national innocence movement—was the distinguished speaker at the Duke Law Convocation Ceremony held on May 15, 2021 in Cameron Indoor Stadium. A longtime member of the Duke Law faculty, Newman also serves as associate director of the Center for Criminal Justice and Professional Responsibility and faculty adviser to Duke’s student-led chapter of the Innocence Project. After earning her law degree at Duke, Newman clerked for the Honorable J. Dickson Phillips, Jr., on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. She was a founding member of the board of the international Innocence Network, was the group’s inaugural co-president and later served as its president, helping set standards and ethical guidelines for innocence clinics across the country. Newman has twice been honored by the Law School’s Law Alumni Association, receiving the Young Alumni Award in 2003, and sharing the A. Kenneth Pye Award for Excellence in Education with Professor James E. Coleman, Jr., in 2018.