Theresa A. Newman
Clinical Professor of Law
Associate Dean for Academic Affairs
Theresa Newman has been Associate Dean for Academic Affairs since 1999 and she was appointed Clinical Professor of Law in July 2007. With Professor James Coleman, Dean Newman teaches Wrongful Convictions, a course that explores the causes of wrongful convictions and leads students in investigations of North Carolina prisoners' claims of actual innocence. She also serves as the President of the North Carolina Center on Actual Innocence (a non-profit organization dedicated to investigating prisoners' claims of innocence), and is a member of the North Carolina Chief Justice's Commission on Actual Innocence, which is studying the causes of wrongful convictions and making recommendations to prevent them. At the Law School, Dean Newman serves as faculty adviser to the Law School's student-led Innocence Project.
Dean Newman received her J.D. from Duke in 1988. She clerked for the Honorable J. Dickson Phillips, Jr., on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit for the first year after graduation and then practiced in the civil litigation group of Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice in Raleigh, North Carolina.