The Commons | Faculty Focus
Christopher Schroeder
Commitment to government service shapes research and teaching and leaves a lasting legacy at Duke Law
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hristopher Schroeder, whose scholarship and teaching reflect insights drawn from extensive government service on congressional staffs and as a top executive branch lawyer, retired from teaching at the end of the academic year. Schroeder, the Charles S. Murphy Professor of Law and Public Policy Studies, joined the faculty in 1979, initially focusing on environmental law and policy and co-authoring a leading casebook on the subject. But as he took on such government posts as chief counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary (chaired by then Sen. Joseph Biden) and in the U.S. Department of Justice as deputy assistant attorney general leading the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) in the Clinton administration and assistant attorney general in charge of the Office of Legal Policy (OLP) during the Obama administration, his research agenda and teaching expanded to include constitutional law, Congress, and the scope of executive power. Government service has had “a natural kind of hydraulic pressure” on his career, said Schroeder, the founding director of the Law School’s Program in Public Law.
26 Duke Law Magazine • Summer 2020
“Every time I’ve gone into government I’ve come to be interested in something slightly different. And those times away have really recharged my batteries for coming back to doing academic work and teaching. I think I’m a better classroom teacher, I’m a better colleague, and I’m a better commentator on other people’s work because of the time I’ve had away getting excited about new topics.” Douglas B. Maggs Professor Emeritus of Law Walter Dellinger, who recruited Schroeder to the OLC as his deputy when he became assistant attorney general in 1993, said few people have held as many senior positions advising the United States government as his longtime Duke Law colleague. “There is no one I have ever encountered who has better judgment than Chris Schroeder. Just within the Department of Justice he’s the rare person who has headed both the Office of Legal Counsel and the Office of Legal Policy, demonstrating the respect that people have, both for his legal acumen and for his sense of wise policy. It is an extraordinary range, not to mention his academic success as a scholar and a teacher and his work in private law.”
