Eric Berger Earl Dunlap Distinguished Professor of Law
Professor Eric Berger joined the faculty in 2007. He received his B.A. with Honors in History from Brown University, and his J.D. from Columbia Law School, where he was a Kent Scholar and an Articles Editor on the Columbia Law Review. After law school, Professor Berger clerked for the Honorable Merrick B. Garland on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. He then practiced in Jenner & Block's Washington, D.C. office, where he worked on litigation in several state and federal trial and appellate courts, including the United States Supreme Court. Professor Berger's matters there included cases involving lethal injection, same-sex marriage, the detention of foreign nationals at Guantanamo Bay, and internet obscenity.
Professor Berger teaches Constitutional Law I (structure), Constitutional Law II (rights), Constitutional History, Federal Courts, First Amendment, and Statutory Interpretation. He also teaches a class for undergraduates on Legislation and Regulation. He has been voted Professor of the Year by the upperclass law students seven times. He has also received the College Distinguished Teaching Award (in 2010), the Law Alumni Council Distinguished Faculty Award (in 2018), and the John H. Binning Award for Excellence (in 2019).
Professor Berger's scholarship focuses on constitutional law. Much of his work explores judicial decision making in constitutional cases, with special attention to deference, fact finding, rhetorical strategies, and other under-theorized factors that help shape judicial opinions in constitutional cases. His article Individual Rights, Judicial Deference, and Administrative Law Norms in Constitutional Decision Making, 91 B.U. L. REV. 2029 (2011), was named the 2011 winner of the American Constitution Society's Richard D. Cudahy Writing Competition on Regulatory and Administrative Law. Professor Berger has also written extensively about lethal injection litigation.
Professor Berger has testified in the Nebraska legislature about a variety of constitutional issues, including free speech, lethal injection, and the process for amending the U.S. Constitution. He is also the faculty advisor to the Law College's chapter of the American Constitution Society and to the Community Legal Education Project, which sends law students into Lincoln schools and community centers to teach about the Constitution.
Professor Berger has also published two video lecture courses about constitutional law with Wondrium (also known as The Great Courses). The first, Law School for Everyone: Constitutional Law (2019), is a twelve lecture course introducing some of the topics and questions students would encounter in an introductory class on constitutional law. The second, The Constitution Through U.S. History (2022), is a twenty-four lecture course exploring the role of constitutional issues in American political, social, and cultural history from the founding to the present.
Professor Berger served as Associate Dean for Faculty from 2016 to 2020.
Watch how Professor Berger examines lethal injection.
Fred Campbell Adjunct Law Professor
Fred Campbell is Executive Director of the Center for Boundless Innovation in Technology and a member of the Space, Cyber and Telecommunications Law Program Advisory Board. Mr. Campbell was formerly a Fellow and Director of the Communications Liberty and Innovation Project at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, President and CEO of the Wireless Communications Association International, Chief of the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and Wireless Legal Advisor to FCC Chairman Kevin Martin. He has also served as a judicial clerk for Nebraska Supreme Court Justice William M. Connolly and an Arabic linguist in the 101st Airborne Division of the United States Army. Mr. Campbell earned a Diploma in Modern Standard Arabic at the Defense Language Institute, a B.S. from Excelsior College, and a J.D., with high distinction, from the University of Nebraska College of Law.
Richard F. Duncan Sherman S. Welpton, Jr. Professor of Law and Warren R. Wise Professor of Law
Professor Duncan joined the faculty in 1979. He received his B.A. degree from the University of Massachusetts (Amherst) in 1973. In 1976, he received his J.D. degree from the Cornell Law School, where he served on the Board of Editors of the Cornell Law Review. He was admitted to the New York Bar in 1977. From 1976-79, he was associated with White & Case, a New York City law firm. Professor Duncan teaches Property, Constitutional Law, and First Amendment. He is a passionate and enthusiastic classroom teacher, whose style is not so much Socratic Dialogue as Socratic Performance Art. He spends most of his passion and energy teaching, writing, and speaking about social justice issues such as the right-to-life, religious liberty, freedom of speech, the pursuit of happiness, and other inalienable rights and liberties. He has spoken and debated at nearly 100 law schools on numerous issues concerning social justice and constitutional law. He loves teaching at Nebraska Law, especially in Room 113 which he claims to own by adverse possession. His favorite legal idea is “first come rights, then comes government to secure those rights.”
Here is a link to Professor Duncan's video CLE for the 2020 Nebraska Bar Annual Meeting on The Masks of the Law from Slavery to Abortion: https://use.vg/jQuD5e and here is a link to his CLE on Compelled Speech from "salute the flag" to "bake the cake": https://use.vg/rqmKFE
Professor Duncan lived for many years on a country road in rural Nebraska. He currently resides in South Lincoln. He and his wife, Kelly, have five children (Casey, Joshua, Rebecca Joy, Hannah Grace, and Kathleen Noel) and three grandchildren. His activities outside law include following professional baseball and hockey, weightlifting (especially going heavy on the incline bench press), and attending theatrical productions on Broadway. He has seen Hamilton: An American Musical 11 times (including twice on Broadway with the original cast). He is a member of the Federalist Society and, much more importantly, of Country Bible Church in Bennet, Nebraska.
Sydney Hayes Lecturer, Assistant Director of the First Amendment Clinic
Sydney Hayes joined the faculty in 2023 as the Assistant Director of the First Amendment Clinic. Prior to joining the University, she was a commercial litigation and alternative dispute resolution associate at Husch Blackwell in Omaha, Nebraska. She has experience in litigation involving complex constitutional issues and business disputes, among others. In addition to her work with the University she continues to practice at the Law Office of Daniel Gutman. Her practice focuses on civil rights, election, and ballot initiative issues.
Sydney received bachelors of arts degrees in Political Science and Criminal Justice from the University of South Dakota. She graduated with highest distinction and Order of the Coif from the University of Nebraska College of Law.
Kyle Langvardt Assistant Professor of Law
Professor Kyle Langvardt joined the faculty in July 2020 as a member of the Nebraska Technology & Governance Center. He is a First Amendment scholar who focuses on the Internet’s implications for free expression both as a matter of constitutional doctrine and as a practical reality. His written work addresses new and confounding policy issues including tech addiction, the collapse of traditional gatekeepers in online media and 3D-printable weapons. Professor Langvardt’s most recent papers appear in the Georgetown Law Journal, the Fordham Law Review and the George Mason Law Review.
Professor Langvardt received his B.A. in Philosophy from Earlham College, where he graduated with College and Departmental Honors, and he received his J.D. from the University of Chicago School of Law. After law school, Professor Langvardt practiced at the Chicago, Illinois office of Locke Lord Bissell & Liddell LLP (now Locke Lord LLP). He went on to teach as a lecturer in the Department of Business Law at Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business, and later as a professor at the University of Detroit Mercy School of Law, where he received James T. Barnes, Sr. Memorial Faculty Scholar Award in 2019.
Watch to see how Professor Langvardt is helping to regulate speech in the 21st Century.
Elana Zeide Assistant Professor of Law
Elana Zeide teaches, researches, and writes about privacy and the legal, policy, and ethical implications of data-driven systems and artificial intelligence. She is an Assistant Professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and part of its new interdisciplinary Nebraska Governance and Technology Center. Her work focuses on the modern day permanent record and how new learning, hiring, and workplace technologies impact education and access to opportunity. Recent articles include Student Privacy in the Age of Big Data, The Structural Consequences of Big Data-Driven Education, and Algorithms Make Lousy Fortune Tellers.
Zeide previously served as a PULSE Fellow in Artificial Intelligence, Law & Policy at UCLA's School of Law, a Visiting Assistant Professor at Seton Hall University’s School of Law, an Associate Research fellow at Princeton University’s Center for Information Technology Policy, a Visiting Fellow at Yale School of Law’s Information Society Project, and a Microsoft Research Fellow at New York University's Information Law Institute. She is also an affiliate at Data & Society Research Institute and at the University of Colorado-Boulder’s Silicon Flatirons and serves on advisory boards for The Future of Privacy Forum, Macmillan Learning’s Impact Research Advisory Council, and Blackboard’s Taskforce to Develop Framework and Standards for the Ethical and Legal Use of Artificial Intelligence in Higher Education.
Zeide received her B.A. cum laude in American Studies from Yale University, her M.F.A. from Columbia University, and her J.D. and LL.M. from New York University School of Law where she was a Notes Editor of the New York University Law Review. Elana worked as a Litigation Associate at Cravath, Swaine & Moore and a Legal Analyst at Bloomberg Media before opening her own privacy, media, and platform law practice. Prior to becoming an attorney, Elana was a journalist and pop culture columnist in London and New York.