Nancy S. Marder is the Professor of Law, Director of the Justice John Paul Stevens Jury Center, and Co-Director of the Institute for Law and the Humanities at Chicago-Kent College of Law. She joined the faculty of IIT Chicago-Kent in the fall of 1999. She has a B.A. (summa cum laude) in English and Afro-American Studies from Yale College; a M.Phil. in International Relations from Cambridge University, where she was a Mellon Fellow; and a J.D. from Yale Law School, where she was an articles editor of the Yale Law Journal.
Prior to beginning her teaching career at the University of Southern California Law School, Professor Marder was a post-doctoral fellow at Yale Law School (1992–93) and a law clerk to Justice John Paul Stevens of the U.S. Supreme Court (1990–92). She also clerked for Judge William A. Norris on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals (1989–90) and Judge Leonard B. Sand in the Southern District of New York (1988–1989). In 1987–88, Professor Marder was a litigation associate at the New York law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison.
Professor Marder's research and writing focus on the jury. She has written about many aspects of the jury, including peremptory challenges, jury instructions, jurors and technology, juror questions, jury nullification, post-verdict interviews of jurors, and jury deliberations. Her articles have appeared in such law reviews as Northwestern University Law Review, Iowa Law Review, Texas Law Review, Southern California Law Review, and Yale Law Journal, and she has organized four symposia in the Chicago-Kent Law Review: "The Jury at a Crossroad: The American Experience," "Secrecy in Litigation," "The 50th Anniversary of 12 Angry Men," and "Comparative Jury Systems." Professor Marder is the author of the book The Jury Process (2005), and she has written several book chapters on the jury and on juries and judges in popular culture. Professor Marder regularly presents her scholarship at conferences in the United States and abroad.
Professor Marder reaches a wide audience with her work on the jury. She is the founder and director of the Jury Center at Chicago-Kent, which informs scholars about new work on the jury and also undertakes special projects. Professor Marder has written about juries and courts for high school students, law students, lawyers and judges and has appeared on numerous radio programs, such as National Public Radio, and television programs, such as WTTW's "Chicago Tonight," in order to discuss current jury trials. As Professor/Reporter for the Illinois Supreme Court Committee on Jury Instructions in Civil Cases since 2003, Professor Marder has helped to draft jury instructions for Illinois. She has also drafted jury instructions for the ABA, advocated successfully for rule changes affecting jurors in Illinois, given public testimony for proposed jury reforms, and served as a member on various jury advisory committees. At Chicago-Kent, Professor Marder teaches a law school course called Juries, Judges & Trials, as well as a course on Legislation and another on Law, Literature & Feminism.