James E. Coleman Jr. has been named the 2022 recipient of the Raphael Lemkin Rule of Law Guardian Medal by the Bolch Judicial Institute. He will be honored during a program on Sept. 7, to be held at Duke Law School and livestreamed on Duke Law’s YouTube channel.
Coleman is the John S. Bradway Professor of the Practice of Law, director of the Center for Criminal Justice and Professional Responsibility, and director of the Wrongful Convictions Clinic at Duke Law. A beloved member of the Duke University faculty for more than 25 years, Coleman is a nationally recognized leader in pursuing justice for the wrongfully convicted and for death penalty reform.
Coleman’s career has been distinguished by his insistence that every person accused of a crime has a constitutional right to a robust defense and to due process. In the late 1980s, Coleman represented serial killer Ted Bundy during his death-row appeals in Florida. In 2006, Coleman chaired Duke University’s ad-hoc committee charged with examining the disciplinary record of Duke’s men’s lacrosse team after three players were accused of rape. Amid overwhelming public outrage and a broadly held assumption that the players were guilty, Coleman was the lone voice urging due process for the accused students and warning all involved against a rush to judgment. Throughout his time at Duke he has directed clinical programs — in appellate litigation, death penalty, and wrongful convictions — designed to ensure that the system in all of...
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