Darrell A. H. Miller | Scholars@Duke

Darrell A. H. Miller
Melvin G. Shimm Distinguished Professor of Law

Darrell A. H. Miller writes and teaches in the areas of civil rights, constitutional law, civil procedure, state and local government law, and legal history. His scholarship on the Second and Thirteenth Amendments has been published in leading law reviews such as the Yale Law Journal, the University of Chicago Law Review, and the Columbia Law Review, and has been cited by the Supreme Court of the United States, the United States Courts of Appeals, the United States District Courts, and in congressional testimony and legal briefs. With Joseph Blocher, he’s the author of The Positive Second Amendment: Rights, Regulation, and the Future of Heller (Cambridge University Press, 2018).

Miller began his academic career at the University of Cincinnati College of Law, where he twice received the Goldman Award for Excellence in Teaching. Prior to joining the academy, Miller practiced complex and appellate litigation in Columbus, Ohio. He is a former clerk to Judge R. Guy Cole, Jr. of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.

Miller graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School and served as an editor of the Harvard Law Review. In addition to his law degree, Miller holds degrees from Oxford University, where he studied as a Marshall Scholar, and from Anderson University.

Current Appointments & Affiliations

Melvin G. Shimm Distinguished Professor of Law, Law School, Duke University 2017
Professor of Law, Law School, Duke University 2013

Contact Information

Duke Law School 210 Science Dr, Box 90362, Durham, NC 27708
Duke Law School Room 3014, Box 90362, Durham, NC 27708
dmiller@law.duke.edu (919) 613-8517
See the Duke Law profile page

Background
Education, Training, & Certifications
- J.D., Harvard University 2001
Previous Appointments & Affiliations
- Visiting Professor in the School of Law, Law School, Duke University 2011 - 2013
Recognition
In the News
- MAY 25, 2022
  
  Following Another School Shooting, the Country Returns to Discussing Gun Violence
- OCT 27, 2021 Duke School of Law
  
  Duke Law Faculty Cited in Amicus Briefs Filed in First Gun Rights Case Heard by Supreme Court in a Decade
- JAN 7, 2021
  
  DC Riot Underscores Dangers of White Supremacy, Experts Say
- FEB 22, 2019
  
  Rethinking Reconstruction
- FEB 12, 2019 Duke Law
  
  New Law Center to Promote Teaching & Scholarship on Second Amendment
- OCT 5, 2018 School of Law
  
  The Past, Present and Future of the Second Amendment
- JUL 11, 2016 The Trace
  
  Darrell Miller comments: How the flood of guns into public spaces may complicate police reform
- FEB 16, 2015 The News & Observer
  
  Prosecution of hate crimes is rare, difficult
- DEC 5, 2014 The Wall Street Journal
  
  Darrell Miller explains origins and parameters of federal civil-rights law used to prosecute police brutality
- JUL 22, 2014 The New York Times Magazine
  
  Darrell Miller: What the Hobby Lobby ruling means for America
- JUL 1, 2014 The Hill
  
  Darrell Miller on restricting Hobby Lobby ruling's impact to contraception
- MAY 8, 2014 American Constitution Society Blog
  
  Darrell Miller: The conservative case for a home-bound Second Amendment
- MAR 31, 2014 U.S. News & World Report
  
  Darrell Miller describes potentially sweeping implications of Hobby Lobby ruling
- MAR 26, 2014 MedPageToday
  
  Darrell Miller: ACA case may be bigger than birth control
- MAR 24, 2014
  
  News Tip: Legal Experts Available to Comment on Supreme Courts 'Hobby Lobby' Cases
- SEP 25, 2013
  
  Darrell Miller: New Legal Scholarship on Civil Rights
Expertise
Global Scholarship
- Expertise
  - United States of America (Country)
Research
Selected Grants
- Duke Center for Firearms Law awarded by Harold Simmons Foundation 2019 - 2020
External Relationships
- American Constitution Society
- Center for the Study of Guns & Society at Wesleyan University
- MomsRising Together & MomsRising Education Fund
- NC Thought Leadership
- National Constitution Center
- Newsday
- RAND Corporation
- Washington Post
- West Academic Press
Publications & Artistic Works
Selected Publications
- Books
  - Miller, D., J. Charles, and J. Blocher. New Histories of Gun Rights and Regulation: Essays on the Place of Guns in American Law (Accepted). Oxford University Press, 2021.
  - Miller, D., and J. Blocher. The Positive Second Amendment: Rights, Regulation, and the Future of Heller. Cambridge University Press, 2018.
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- Academic Articles
  - Miller, D., and J. Tucker. “Common Use, Lineage, and Lethality.” Uc Davis Law Review 55, no. 5 (2022): 2495–2513.
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  - Miller, D., and D. Fagundes. “The City’s Second Amendment.” Cornell Law Review 106, no. 1 (2021): 677–744.
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  - Miller, D. “Second Amendment Equilibria.” Northwestern University Law Review 116, no. 1 (2021): 239–73.
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  - Miller, D. “Tainted Precedent.” Arkansas Law Review 74, no. 2 (2021): 291–96.
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  - Miller, D., J. Blocher, S. Buell, and J. Charles. “Pointing Guns.” Texas Law Review 99, no. 6 (2021): 1173–1200.
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  - Miller, D. “Constitutional Pronouns.” Duke Journal of Gender Law & Policy 27, no. 1 (2020): 227–34.
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  - Miller, D., J. Blocher, and J. Charles. “The Geography of a Constitutional Right: Gun Rights Outside the Home.” Law and Contemporary Problems 83, no. 3 (2020): i–vii.
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  - Miller, D. “Owning Heller.” University of Florida Journal of Law & Public Policy Forum 1 (2019): 1–17.
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  - Miller, D. “Constitutional Conflict and Sensitive Places.” William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal 28, no. 2 (2019): 459–87.
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  - Miller, D., and J. Blocher. “Stevens, J., Dissenting: The Legacy of Heller.” Judicature 103, no. 3 (2019): 9–13.
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  - Miller, D. “Comments on an Amendment to Repeal the Natural Born Citizen Clause.” Duke Journal of Constitutional Law & Public Policy 13, no. 2 (2018): 77–82.
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  - Miller, D. “Romanticism Meets Realism in Second Amendment Adjudication.” Duke Law Journal Online 68 (2018).
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  - Miller, D. “Dignity and Second Amendment Enforcement - Response to William D. Araiza's, Arming the Second Amendment and Enforcing the Fourteenth.” Washington and Lee Law Review Online 74 (2018): 438–49.
  - Miller, D., and J. Blocher. “The Second Amendment as Positive Law.” Charleston Law Review 13, no. 2 (2018): 103–23.
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  - Miller, D. “Self-Defense, Defense of Others, and the State.” Law and Contemporary Problems 80 (2017): 85–102.
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  - Miller, D., and E. Ruben. “Preface: The Second Generation of Second Amendment Law & Policy.” Law and Contemporary Problems 80, no. 2 (2017): 1–9.
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  - Miller, D. “Fear and Firearms.” Tulsa Law Review 52 (2017): 553–65.
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  - Blocher, J., and D. Miller. “What is Gun Control? Direct Burdens, Incidental Burdens, and the Boundaries of the Second Amendment.” University of Chicago Law Review 83 (2016): 295–355.
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  - Miller, D. “Continuity and the Declaration of Independence.” University of Southern California Law Review 89 (2016): 601–19.
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  - Miller, D. “Institutions and the Second Amendment.” Duke Law Journal 66 (2016): 69–119.
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  - Miller, D. “Second Amendment Traditionalism and Desuetude.” Georgetown Journal of Law & Public Policy 14 (2016): 223.
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  - Miller, D. “The Thirteenth Amendment, Disparate Impact, and Empathy Deficits.” Seattle University Law Review 39 (2016): 847–57.
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  - Miller, D., and J. Blocher. “Lethality, Public Carry, and Adequate Alternatives.” Harvard Journal on Legislation 53 (2016): 279–301.
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  - Miller, D. “Book Review.” Political Science Quarterly 131, no. 4 (2016): 882–83.
  - Miller, D. “Peruta, the Home-Bound Second Amendment, and Fractal Originalism.” Harvard Law Review Forum 127 (2014): 238–42.
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  - Miller, D. “Text, History, and Tradition: What the Seventh Amendment Can Teach Us About the Second.” Yale Law Journal 122 (2013): 852–938.
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  - Miller, D. “Analogies and Institutions in the First and Second Amendments: A Response to Professor Magarian.” Texas Law Review, 2013, 137–51.
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  - Miller, D. “Racial Cartels and the Thirteenth Amendment Enforcement Power.” Kentucky Law Journal 100 (2012): 23–41.
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  - Miller, D. “Book Review.” American Journal of Legal History 52 (2012): 379–82.
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  - Miller, D. “The Thirteenth Amendment and the Regulation of Custom.” Columbia Law Review 112 (2012): 1811–54.
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  - Miller, D. “Guns, Inc.: Citizens United, McDonald, and the Future of Corporate Constitutional Rights.” New York University Law Review 86 (2011): 887–957.
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  - Miller, D. “Retail Rebellion and the Second Amendment.” Indiana Law Journal 86 (2011): 939–77.
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  - Miller, D. “Iqbal and Empathy.” Umkc Law Review 78 (2010): 999–1013.
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  - Miller, D. “A Short Reply to Professor Volokh.” Columbia Law Review Sidebar 109 (2009): 105–6.
  - Miller, D. “Guns as Smut: Defending the Home-Bound Second Amendment.” Columbia Law Review 109 (2009): 1278–1356.
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  - Miller, D. “White Cartels, the Civil Rights Act of 1866, and the History of Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer Co.” Fordham Law Review 77 (2008): 999–1050.
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  - Miller, D. “State DOMAs, Neutral Principles, and the Mobius of State Action.” Temple Law Review 81 (2008): 967–94.
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  - Miller, D. “The Stain of Slavery: Notes Toward an Attainder Theory of the Thirteenth Amendment.” University of Toledo Law Review 38, no. 3 (2007): 1011–36.
  - Robboy, S. J. “BOOK REVIEWS.” Int J Gynecol Pathol 20, no. 1 (January 2001): 102.
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- Book Sections
  - Miller, D. “Prohibitions on Private Armies in State Constitutions (Accepted).” In New Histories of Gun Rights and Regulation: Essays on the Place of Guns in American Law and Society. Oxford University Press, 2022.
  - Miller, D. “The Expressive Second Amendment.” In Guns in Law, 48–66. University of Massachusetts Press, 2019.
  - Miller, D. “The Janus of Civil Rights Law.” In The Greatest and the Grandest Act: The Civil Rights Act of 1866 from Reconstruction to Today, 234–61. Southern Illinois University Press, 2018.
  - Miller, D. “A Thirteenth Amendment Agenda for the Twenty-First Century: Of Promises, Power, and Precaution.” In The Promises of Liberty: The History and Contemporary Relevance of the Thirteenth Amendment, 2010.
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- Other Articles
  - Miller, D. ““Lineal Descendant” Analysis in Second Amendment Litigation.” Harvard Law Review Blog, 2021.
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  - Miller, D. “The Reconstruction Amendments’ Canonical Texts.” Balkinization, 2021.
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  - Miller, D., and J. Blocher. “SCOTUS Taking up 2nd Amendment Case Could Mean Cuts to Broad Swaths of Gun Regulation.” Tpm Cafe, 2021.
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  - Miller, D. “Conservatives Sound Like Anti-racists — When the Cause Is Gun Rights.” Washington Post, 2021.
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  - Miller, D. “Montgomery Facing Litigation for Renaming Street After Civil Rights Leader.” Slog, 2021.
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  - Miller, D. “A Simplistic Interpretation of "Defund the Police" May Embolden Vigilantes.” Newsday, 2020.
  - Miller, D. “Gun Laws Were Meant to Ban Private Militants. Now, Our Hands are Tied.” Washington Post, 2020.
  - Miller, D., and A. Huq. “How to Safeguard Progressive Legislation Against the Supreme Court: Poison Pills.” Washington Post, 2020.
  - Miller, D. “Guard These True Monuments to Martin Luther King Jr.” Newsday, 2018.
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  - Miller, D., and J. Blocher. “What Firearms Law and Regulatory Scholarship Can Learn from Each Other.” The Regulatory Review, 2018.
- Reports
  - Miller, D. “African Americans and the Insurrectionary Second Amendment.” Brennan Center for Justice, 2021.
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Teaching & Mentoring
Recent Courses
- LAW 543: State Constitutional Law and Localism 2022
- LAW 543W: State Constitutional Law and Localism, Writing Credit 2022
- LAW 551: Civil Rights Enforcement Colloquium 2022
- LAW 110: Civil Procedure 2021
- LAW 229: The Law of State and Local Government 2021
- LAW 334: Civil Rights Litigation 2021
- LAW 578JS: Race and the Civil Rights 2021
- LAW 110: Civil Procedure 2020
- LAW 334: Civil Rights Litigation 2020
- LAW 611: Readings 2020
- LAW 623: Externship Associated Research Paper 2020
- LAW 627: Externship Research Tutorial 2020
- LAW 640: Independent Research 2020

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Education, Training, & Certifications

Previous Appointments & Affiliations

In the News

Global Scholarship

Expertise

Selected Grants

External Relationships

Selected Publications

Books

Academic Articles

Book Sections

Other Articles

Reports

Recent Courses