Peggy Cooper Davis

Peggy Cooper Davis joined the NYU Law faculty in September 1983 after having served for three years as a judge of the Family Court of the State of New York and having engaged in the practice and administration of law during the preceding 10 years. Her scholarly work has been influential in the areas of child welfare, constitutional rights of family liberty, and interdisciplinary analysis of legal pedagogy and process. Davis’s 1997 book, Neglected Stories: The Constitution and Family Values, illuminates the importance of anti-slavery traditions as guides to the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. Her recent book, Enacting Pleasure, is a collection of essays exploring the social, cultural, psychological, and political implications of Carol Gilligan’s relational psychology. She has also published more than fifty articles and book chapters, most notably in the premier journals of Harvard, Yale, NYU and Michigan law schools. For more than 10 years, Davis directed the Lawyering Program, a widely acclaimed course of experiential learning that distinguishes NYU Law School’s first-year curriculum. She now directs the Experiential Learning Lab, through which she works to develop and test progressive learning strategies and to develop professional education courses that systematically address the interpretive, interactive, ethical, and social dimensions of practice. Davis has served as chair of the board of the Russell Sage Foundation and as a director of numerous not-for-profit, for-profit, and government entities.