Kerry Abrams

About

Kerry Abrams is the James B. Duke and Benjamin N. Duke Dean of the School of Law at Duke University and a distinguished professor of law. She became dean on July 1, 2018. Dean Abrams is a scholar specializing in immigration, citizenship, family, and constitutional law, with notable scholarly work on family-based migration, the legal regulation of immigrant families, and the history of immigration law. Prior to her appointment at Duke Law, she served on the law faculty of the University of Virginia for thirteen years, where she was named the Albert Clark Tate, Jr., Research Professor of Law in 2011 and received the McFarland Award for excellence in legal scholarship in 2012. She also held the position of vice provost for faculty affairs at the University of Virginia, overseeing faculty recruitment, retention, policies, promotion, tenure, and professional development. Dean Abrams is a graduate of Swarthmore College with a B.A. in English literature with highest honors and a graduate of Stanford Law School, where she served as president of the Moot Court Board and co-chair of Women of Stanford Law. She clerked for Judge Stanwood R. Duval Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana and practiced commercial litigation at Patterson, Belknap, Webb & Tyler LLP in New York City. Additionally, she served as an acting assistant professor of lawyering at New York University School of Law, teaching legal research, writing, oral advocacy, mediation, negotiation,…

Research topics

• Political Science
• Sociology
• Law
• Gender studies
• Computer Science
• Public relations
• Geography
• Archaeology

Selected publications

• DNA and Distrust

  ˜The œNotre Dame law review · 2016-01-01 · 7 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  ABSTRACT Over the past three decades, government regulation and funding of DNA testing has reshaped the use of genetic evidence across various fields, including criminal law, family law, and employment law. Courts have struggled with questions of when and whether to treat genetic evidence as implicating individual rights, policy trade-offs, or federalism problems. We identify two modes of genetic testing: identification testing, used to establish a person's identity, and predictive testing, whic…

  Publisher

• (Mis)Recognizing Polygamy

  Utah State University Press eBooks · 2016-01-01 · 5 citations

  book-chapterOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Family, Gender, and Leadership in the Legal Profession

  2020 · 2 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDF

• The Rights of Marriage: Obergefell, Din, and the Future of Constitutional Family Law

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2017-01-01 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Cumulative Constitutional Rights

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2015-01-01 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Brandon L. Garrett

  Duke University

  4 shared

• Peter Brooks

  2 shared

• Nina A. Mendelson

  University of Michigan–Ann Arbor

  1 shared

• Jennifer Lee Koh

  Pepperdine University

  1 shared

• Daniel Pham

  RMIT University

  1 shared

• Catherine Y. Kim

  Brooklyn Law School

  1 shared

• Kathryn E. Kovacs

  Rutgers Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights

  1 shared

• M. Kagan

  1 shared

Awards & honors

• McFarland Award for excellence in legal scholarship (2012)
• Albert Clark Tate, Jr., Research Professor of Law (2011)

Similar researchers at Duke University

• Matthew Adlerh-30
• Sarah C. W. Bakerh-25