Margaret H. Lemos is the Robert G. Seaks LLB ’34 Professor of Law at Duke Law School and a scholar of constitutional law, legal institutions, and procedure. Her scholarship focuses on the institutions of law interpretation and enforcement and their effects on substantive rights. She writes in four related fields: federalism; administrative law, including the relationship between courts and agencies; statutory interpretation; and civil procedure. Her articles have been published in the Supreme Court Review as well as in the Harvard, New York University, Texas, Minnesota, Vanderbilt, and Notre Dame law reviews.
She came to Duke Law in 2011 from the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, where she was an associate professor. Prior to joining the Cardozo faculty, she was a Furman Fellow and program coordinator at New York University School of Law, a Bristow Fellow at the Office of the Solicitor General, and a law clerk for Judge Kermit V. Lipez of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, and for U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens. She graduated summa cum laude from New York University School of Law, where she was senior notes editor of the New York University Law Review.
She was awarded Duke’s Distinguished Teaching Award in 2013, and students at Cardozo voted her the “best first-year teacher” in 2010 and in 2011.