Ted Shaw, NAACP LDF’s fifth President and Director-Counsel, has been appointed to lead the Center for Civil Rights at UNC Chapel Hill School of Law. In this position, Ted will succeed the late Julius Chambers, our third President and Director-Counsel, who stepped down from his UNC post in 2010.
Ted, currently a law professor at Columbia University Law School, will become the first Julius Chambers Distinguished Professor of Law at UNC. He joined LDF in 1982 where he directed the education docket and litigated school desegregation, capital punishment, and other civil rights cases throughout the country. In 1987, he established LDF’s Western Regional Office in Los Angeles, and served as its Western Regional Counsel. In 1990, he left LDF to join the faculty of the University of Michigan Law School, where he taught constitutional law, civil procedure, and civil rights. In 1993, on a leave of absence from Michigan, he rejoined LDF as Associate Director-Counsel.
Ted was lead counsel in a coalition that represented African-American and Latino student-intervenors in the University of Michigan undergraduate affirmative action admissions case. In 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court heard that case, along with one challenging the use of affirmative action at the University of Michigan Law School. The Court ruled in favor of diversity as a compelling state interest.
UNC School of Law Dean Jack Boger said the challenge in selecting a successor to Chambers came in finding someone with the ability both to serve as a full faculty member while also having experience as director of a litigation and advocacy center.
“Most talented civil rights experts are good at either teaching or at litigating,” Boger said. “Ted Shaw excels at both.”
Shaw said he was drawn to UNC and to the state of North Carolina. “What happens in North Carolina is important,” Shaw said. “North Carolina is a bellwether state when it comes to civil rights. There’s work to do here.”
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