Five Questions

July 31, 2008Duke Law News

1. What are you working on right now?
I spent two weeks in June and July teaching American Law from a Torts Perspective to German law students at the University in Goettingen, Germany. It was fun and challenging to prepare a course in a subject matter I don't normally teach. The German students were engaging and were particularly interested in our jury system. They also wanted to discuss our celebrated punitive damages cases (McDonald's coffee!).

Currently I am supervising summer students in the AIDS Clinic as we continue to handle cases for our clients and gear up for a new crew of clinic students in the fall. The clinical faculty continues to meet over the summer to further articulate and refine our teaching goals and methods for the clinical program.

2. What are your interests or passions outside your scholarly work and teaching?
My family (watching my older son play basketball and my younger son play saxophone), walking, playing piano, live music.

3. If you could sit in on one professor's class, which professor would you choose, which class, and why?
Kate Bartlett's Gender and the Law for two reasons: 1. the wonderful feedback I've heard from students who have taken this course over the years, and 2. my interest in a topic that wasn't even offered as a course when I was in law school. I actually plan to sit in on Kate's Employment Discrimination class this semester because it is relevant to my work in the clinic.

4. What are you reading right now?
Weimar Germany: Promise and Tragedy by Eric D. Weitz. Just finished A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest Gaines.

5. Tell us something about yourself that might surprise your colleagues and students.
Since becoming a lawyer, I've had the opportunity to sit on two juries--one in a second degree murder trial.
Professor Carolyn McAllaster