September 30, 2023 | By Miranda Campbell Kerrigan, Vol. 73 Editor-in-Chief

The three years we spend as students at Duke Law and in Durham shape us— as legal thinkers and as people. And so, as we open Volume 73 of Duke Law Journal, we begin with a celebration of our home here in Durham and at Duke. In recognition of this place and this institution, each of the pieces in Issue One shares a connection to Duke or Durham; some share a connection to both.

We kick off Volume 73 with our lead article, Fact Stripping, written by our very own Duke Law professors, Joseph Blocher and Brandon Garrett. Professor Blocher holds a special connection to Durham, too: Durham is his hometown. Professor Jacob Charles, the author of our second article, The Dead Hand of a Silent Past: Bruen, Gun Rights, and the Shackles of History, likewise shares a connection to Duke. He is an alumnus of both Duke Law and Duke Law Journal.

Both Notes featured in Issue One are legal history pieces related to political, social, and economic development in Durham. George Werner’s Note, Norm Commandeering and the Tobacco Trust, chronicles the emergence of the American Tobacco Company’s “tobacco trust” and its impact on bright leaf tobacco auctions in Durham. Drawing on this rich history, Werner proposes that concentrated market power can sometimes weaken the ability of norm enforcers to sanction violations—a phenomenon he refers to as norm commandeering. Kathy Zhou, in her Note, The Last Black Tobacco Union: Local 208, Segregated Seniority, and the Integrating South, recounts the story of Durham’s last Black tobacco union, Local 208, and its fight for seniority rights. Local 208’s fight, as told by Zhou, illustrates the need for Title VII remedies soon to come that could reckon with past discrimination and its lasting effects.

We are excited for Issue One and for what is to come in the rest of Volume 73. But for now, here’s to Durham, Duke, and Volume 73 of Duke Law Journal.