Levi has gained national renown for his leadership in law reform, both through his work in the federal judicial rule-making process and with the American Law Institute (ALI), where he is a member of the governing Council and has served as advisor to the Federal Judicial Code Revision and Aggregate Litigation Projects.

Appointed by then Chief Justice William Rehnquist to the Advisory Committee on the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure in 1994, and to the chair of that committee in 2000, Levi has been involved in crafting amendments to discovery rules, including recent amendments which added e-discovery, as well as the class action rules, which, he points out, have involved intense inquiry into the role of the legal system and the problems created by mass torts. As chair of the Judicial Conference Committee on the Rules of Practice and Procedure since 2003, Levi has overseen all federal rule making, including that pertaining to the civil, criminal, appellate, evidence, and bankruptcy rules. “There isn’t a federal rule out there that I haven’t been involved with in one way or another if there is a proposal for change,” he says. He enjoys the consensus building involved in the rule making process, which involves practitioners, academics, judges, and the congressional and executive branches of government.

“It’s a wonderful process to see people from all regions of the country, with different practices and different outlooks, and from different parts of the government or practice, come together, grapple with these issues, and come to an understanding over a period of time. It’s an example of the repeated triumph of reason and reasoned discussion over ignorance, because none of us have a full view of how the legal system operates. I find myself constantly being educated and reeducated.”

“Watching David chair the Standing Committee on the Rules of Practice and Procedure is like watching one of the great orchestra conductors,” says Charles L.B. Lowndes Professor of Law Sara Beale who serves as reporter to the Advisory Committee on Criminal Rules. “He moves though the agendas in a way that looks effortless – but reflects a great deal of prior thought and planning – to highlight key issues, focus the discussion, and seek consensus and solutions to the most difficult issues. The members of the Committee are a sort of ‘who’s who’ of the profession, and he really brings the best out of them. He is also extremely effective at the meetings of the Advisory Committees, and in working behind the scenes with the reporters and committee
chairs. He is astute, strategic in the best sense, and a true leader.”

Levi has also been active with the bar in his district outside the courtroom, calling the development of young lawyers one of his “unstated” judicial duties. To that end, he was a founder and long-time president of a chapter of the Inns of Court at the University of California, Davis, which is named for his friend and mentor Judge Schwartz, and which brings members of the bar and bench together to discuss professional and ethical issues.

Closing the circle as Duke’s new dean

To have spent a significant part of his career in public service has been extremely meaningful personally, Levi says, with “psychic rewards” that are both exciting and fulfilling. Though he has long delayed his move into an academic setting, Levi observes that he has been able to nurture his scholarly interests while on the bench and that he finds parallels between the work of academic lawyers and judges. “We are both detached observers; we both follow new developments in the law; we read law review articles; we consider arguments based on intellectual work.”

Having characterized his move to Duke as carrying the air of a homecoming, Levi is aware that the academic marketplace has changed since his youth in Chicago. “The environment is far more competitive,” he says. “But the old ideal is still terribly important: A community of scholars, loyal to one another and to the institution, who want to see each other flourish, who want to see the whole greater than its parts, and who want to help each other reach their scholarly potential.”

Contemplating the latest step in a career in which he jokes that he has been “thoroughly incompetent” for each job he’s taken, though he clearly has excelled in all, Levi recalls his promise and practice to “never to pretend to know something that I don’t know.” And ever the historian, he reaches back into his past for other key lessons he can bring to his new role as dean of Duke Law School, in addition to the collegiality he grew up with: his father’s conviction that all endeavors can be brought to serve the public good; the versatility of the law he saw demonstrated by Justice Powell; the value of diversity; how mutual support and common mission build an institution; how in every situation, “men and women of good will have the ability to work toward common understanding.”

“I have been blessed to repeatedly work with people who have that sense of purpose,” he says. Recalling Justice Powell’s transition from a career in practice to the highest court in the nation, Levi notes that the justice “had to work very hard” to make that transition. “But it did work. Maybe that’s something I have to do now, too. I have the faith that there is a quality in lawyers and in the law that carries over from the academy, to the bench, to practice.”