Notre Dame Law Professors Randy Kozel and Samuel Bray were appointed to endowed professorships at the beginning of the fall 2022 semester.
In making the announcement, Joseph A. Matson Dean and Professor of Law G. Marcus Cole said, “Appointment to an endowed professorship allows the Law School to honor and invest in our most accomplished faculty. Randy and Sam are both exceptional scholars and mentors. Their appointment to these two endowed professorships signify their distinguished achievement and leadership in their fields of expertise, along with their exemplary teaching and dedication to our students. We are deeply grateful to the generous benefactors who make these professorships possible.”
Kozel, who serves as the Law School’s associate dean for faculty development and academic affairs, will be the new Fritz Duda Family Professor of Law. This professorship was established in 2006 by Fritz and Mary Lee Duda to honor distinguished teachers and scholars at the Law School. The Duda family has made many generous gifts in support of a wide range of Notre Dame initiatives, including several endowed professorships and chairs. Fritz Duda is a Hesburgh Trustee and received an honorary doctor of laws degree from Notre Dame in 2009.
Kozel joined Notre Dame Law School in 2011. He teaches and researches in fields including constitutional law, federal courts, information privacy, and contract law.
His research focuses on the role of precedent in legal decision making. He makes the case for using precedent to bridge interpretive disagreements in law in his book, “Settled Versus Right: A Theory of Precedent.” Kozel is also the faculty director for the Program on Constitutional Structure, and he was voted Distinguished Teacher of the Year by the Law School’s Class of 2014.
“I’m so honored to be part of this amazing community. And I’m deeply grateful to the Duda family for their tremendous support and partnership in helping ND Law to pursue its mission of training the next generation of outstanding professionals while engaging the most pressing legal questions of the day,” said Kozel. “To hold the Duda Family Chair is all the more inspiring because my predecessor was Peg Brinig, a legendary scholar and teacher whose career exemplifies the profound value of integrating faith and reason in pursuit of truth.”
Bray has been named the new John N. Matthews Professor of Law. This professorship was established by Hesburgh Trustee Donald J. Matthews in honor of his father, John N. Matthews, to provide support for a faculty position in law. Donald and his wife, Ann L. Bowers, are residents of Westlake Village, Calif.
Bray is one of the leading scholars in the United States in the fields of remedies and equity, and he also writes in constitutional law. Bray’s 2017 article in the Harvard Law Review, “Multiple Chancellors: Reforming the National Injunction,” has been widely cited by courts grappling with what do about nationwide injunctions. Bray is also an author (with various coauthors) of a remedies casebook, a constitutional law casebook, two theological books, and a forthcoming treatise on the law of equity.
Bray frequently writes and speaks about national injunctions and other equitable remedies. He is an elected member of the American Law Institute and is a member of the Advisory Committee for Rules of Procedure for the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. He has testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee, the House Judiciary Committee, and the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States. He is also a faculty fellow of the Notre Dame Program on Private Law and the Religious Liberty Initiative. Bray was a professor of law at UCLA before joining the Notre Dame Law faculty in 2018.
Bray said, “I am deeply grateful to Donald Matthews and Ann Bowers for the John N. Matthews chair, not least because the previous holder of the chair was a colleague I think of with great admiration and affection, John Nagle. It’s an incredible privilege to write about and teach law with my brilliant colleagues at Notre Dame Law School.”
Originally published by at law.nd.edu on October 04, 2022.