Laura Underkuffler was a member of the Duke Law faculty for 18 years. She taught courses on property, land use, and federal courts. While at Duke she also served as a special counsel to the U.S. Senate in 1991-1992, and was a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in 1993. In 2003 Underkuffler won the Duke Bar Association’s Distinguished Teacher Award and a Faculty Scholarship Award for her book, The Idea of Property: Its Meaning and Power. While at Duke she was a visiting professor at the Universities of Maine and Pennsylvania, Georgetown, and Harvard.
Underkuffler completed a B.A. at Carleton College in 1974 and a J.D. at the William Mitchell College of Law in 1978. After law school she clerked for a judge in the U.S.C.A. 8th Circuit before going into private practice for several years. Underkuffler worked in the Minneapolis public defender office from 1985 to 1986. In 1987 she became a Residential Fellow and Assistant to the Dean at Yale while she earned her LL.M. degree. In 1994 she also completed an S.J.D. at Yale.
Underkuffler became the J. DuPratt White Professor of Law at Cornell in 2009.
Sources:
Duke University, School of Law, Bulletin of Duke University School of Law [serial]
2014-1015 AALS Directory of Law Teachers 1197
- Property
- Legal Writing and Advocacy
- Evidence
- Federal Courts
- Advanced Topics in Property (Seminar)
- Land Use Planning
Books
- Civil Appellate Practice in the Minnesota Court of Appeals (Butterworth-Heinemann, )
Articles & Essays
- Book Review, 25 Law & History Review 426-428 () (reviewing Robert M. Fogelson, Bourgeois Nightmares: Suburbia, 1870-1930 (2005))
- Human Genetics Studies: The Case for Group Rights, 35 Journal of Law Medicine & Ethics 383-395 ()
- Lessons From Outlaws, 156 University of Pennsylvania Law Review PENNumbra 262-268 ()
- Property as Constitutional Myth: Utilities and Dangers, 92 Cornell Law Review 1239-1254 ()
- Religious Exemptions and the Common Good: A Reply to Professor Carmella, 110 West Virginia Law Review 449-457 ()
- Kelo's Moral Failure, 15 William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal 377-387 ()
- The Just and the Wild, 18 Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities 171-177 ()
- Through a Glass Darkly: Van Orden, McCreary and the Dangers of Transparency in Establishment Clause Jurisprudence, 5 First Amendment Law Review 59-81 ()
- Captured by Evil: The Idea of Corruption in Law ()
- Tahoe's Requiem: The Death of the Scalian View of Property and Justice, 21 Constitutional Commentary 727-755 ()
- Teaching Property Stories, 55 Journal of Legal Education 152-162 () (reviewing Property Stories (Gerald Korngold & Andrew P. Morris eds., 2004))
- Thoughts on ‘Smith’ and Religious-Group Autonomy, 5 Brigham Young University Law Review 1773-1787 ()
- 'Davey’ and the Limits of Equality, Tulsa Law Review 267-278 ()
- The ‘Blaine’ Debate: Must States Fund Religious Schools?, 2 First Amendment Law Review 179-197 ()
- The Price of Vouchers for Religious Freedom, 78 University of Detroit Mercy Law Review 463-478 ()
- Vouchers and Beyond: The Individual as Causative Agent in Establishment Clause Jurisprudence, 75 Indiana Law Journal 167-191 ()
- When Should Rights “Trump”? An Examination of Speech and Property, 52 Maine Law Review 311-322 ()
- Agentic and Conscientic Decisions in Law: Death and Other Cases, 74 Notre Dame Law Review 1713-1736 ()
- Judge Gerald W. Heaney: An Admired and Respected Jurist, Mentor, and Friend, 81 Minnesota Law Review 1119-1123 ()
- Takings and the Nature of Property, 9 Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence 161-205 ()
- Yoder and the Question of Equality, 25 Capital University Law Review 789-804 ()
- Property: A Special Right, 71 Notre Dame Law Review 1033-1058 ()
- The Separation of the Religious and the Secular: A Foundational Challenge to First Amendment Theory, 36 William & Mary Law Review 837-988 ()
- Individual Conscience and the Law, 42 DePaul Law Review 93-99 ()
- Book Review: The Perfidy of Property, 70 Texas Law Review 293 () (reviewing Jennifer Nedelsky, Private Property and the Limits of American Constitutionalism (1991))
- On Property: An Essay, 100 Yale Law Journal 127-148 ()
- “Discrimination” on the Basis of Religion: An Examination of Attempted Value Neutrality in Employment, 30 William & Mary Law Review 581-625 ()