Marcilynn Burke

Dean and Mitchell Franklin Professor of Law Marcilynn A. Burke joined Tulane University School of Law in 2024. She earned an A. B. in International Studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1991, where she was a member of Phi Beta Kappa, and she earned a J.D. from Yale Law School in 1995. Dean Burke edited both the Yale Journal of International Law and the Yale Journal of Law and Feminism. After graduating from Yale, Dean Burke clerked for the Honorable Raymond A. Jackson of the Eastern District of Virginia. She later joined the law firm of Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton, where her practice focused on environmental law, antitrust, and civil and criminal litigation. Dean Burke served as a visiting professor at Rutgers School of Law in 2001. In 2002, Dean Burke joined the law faculty at the University of Houston. From 2009 to 2013, she served in the U.S. Department of the Interior. Initially Deputy Director for Programs and Policy for the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), Dean Burke was subsequently appointed Acting Assistant Secretary for Land and Minerals Management for the Department of the Interior by President Barack Obama. In the latter role, she helped develop the land use, resource management, and regulatory oversight policies administered by the BLM, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, and the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement. Following her term at the Department of the Interior, Dean Burke returned to the University of Houston Law Center as an associate professor of law and later served as associate dean. She was named professor of the year by the Law Center’s Black Law Students Association. In 2017 Dean Burke was appointed dean of the University of Oregon’s law school, where she also held the Dave Frohnmayer Chair in Leadership. She is the current Chair of the Board of Trustees for the Law School Admission Council. Dean Burke’s scholarship is concentrated in the areas of property, land use, and environmental and natural resources law.