Professor Derek W. Black

Derek W. Black is a professor of law and the Ernest F. Hollings Chair in Constitutional Law at the University of South Carolina School of Law. He also directs the law school’s Constitutional Law Center.  His areas of expertise include education law and policy, constitutional law, and civil rights. The focus of his current scholarship is the intersection of constitutional law and public education, particularly as it pertains to educational equality and fairness for disadvantaged students. His research has been published in the Yale Law Journal, Stanford Law Review, NYU Law Review, California Law Review, Cornell Law Review, Northwestern University Law Review, Vanderbilt Law Review and dozens of others. His work has been cited by federal courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court. Based on that research, he offers expert witness testimony in school funding, voucher, and federal education policy litigation.

He is the author of a leading education law casebook, Education Law: Equality, Fairness, and Reform, and two other books aimed at wider audiences, Schoolhouse Burning: Public Education and the Assault on American Democracy and Ending Zero Tolerance: The Crisis of Absolute School Discipline.

He began his career teaching at Howard University School of Law, where he founded and directed the Education Rights Center. Prior to teaching, he litigated education cases at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.