Carolina Law Welcomes Four New Faculty Members

August 13, 2019

UNC School of Law is pleased to welcome four new faculty members this school year.

Kerrel Murray joins the school as a two-year postdoctoral fellow. After graduating from Stanford Law School, Murray clerked on the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals and District Court for the District of Columbia. He subsequently worked as an associate at Covington & Burling LLP and a fellow at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., from which he joins UNC. His teaching and research interests include property law, administrative law, race and the law, and how law reinforces or undermines democracy. Murray teaches Race and the Law.

Joining the school’s new Institute for Innovation as clinical associate professor and director of the Intellectual Property (IP) Clinic is Zaneta Robinson, a board-certified specialist in trademark law by the North Carolina State Bar. Robinson was most recently in private practice with Kilpatrick Townsend, where she focused on trademark and copyright clearance, registration and protection issues. She also has extensive experience drafting and negotiating contracts that affect intellectual property rights and representing clients before the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board of the United States Patent and Trademark Office. She has been teaching in the IP Clinic as an adjunct professor since 2017.

Rick Su joins the faculty from the University at Buffalo School of Law, where he has taught since 2007 in the areas of local government law, immigration, and federalism. He was a visiting professor at Harvard Law School in 2015 and a visiting professor at Washington University in St. Louis School of Law in 2018. His research has appeared in such law journals as the Columbia Law ReviewWilliam & Mary Law Review, the North Carolina Law Review,and the Harvard Law & Policy Review. Before joining the faculty at University of Buffalo, he clerked for the Hon. Stephen Reinhardt on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and worked in the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. He teaches Immigration and Citizenship, Property, and State and Local Government Law.

Marjorie S. White joins the faculty as clinical professor and director of the new Startup NC Law Clinic; she will also serve as director of small business initiatives for the Institute for Innovation. She joins the faculty from Brooklyn Law School, where she had served as an associate professor of clinical law and director of transactional practice for the Brooklyn Law Incubator & Policy Clinic since 2014. Prior to entering academia, White had extensive experience in private practice, both at law firms as well as in executive in-house positions. She spent much of her career in the corporate department of Davis Polk & Wardwell, where she focused on mergers and acquisitions, securities work and private equity transactions. After graduating from law school, White clerked for the Hon. Robert J. Ward of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

In addition to the new faculty, UNC School of Law also recently named the following new chair appointments:

  • David Ardia, Reef C. Ivey II Excellence Fund Term Professor of Law
  • Andrew Chin, Paul B. Eaton Distinguished Professor of Law
  • John Coyle, Reef C. Ivey II Distinguished Professor of Law
  • Deborah Gerhardt, Reef C. Ivey II Excellence Fund Term Professor of Law
  • Michael Gerhardt, Burton Craige Distinguished Professor
  • Andrew Hessick, Judge John J. Parker Distinguished Professor of Law
  • Thomas Kelley, James Dickson Phillips Jr. Distinguished Professor of Law
  • Mary-Rose Papandrea, Samuel Ashe Distinguished Professor of Constitutional Law
  • Kathleen Thomas, George R. Ward Term Professor of Law

-August 13, 2019