Joined Duquesne University School of Law

In 1993, Nancy Perkins joined Duquesne University School of Law, beginning a long teaching career that would make her a significant figure in legal education and environmental-law scholarship. Her appointment placed her in a position to influence generations of law students through courses in property, environmental law, environmental justice, Pennsylvania administrative law, administrative process, and advanced legal research writing.

That breadth mattered because it reflected an unusually integrated approach to legal education. Perkins’s scholarship examined the intersection of property, environmental regulation, sustainability, equity, and feminism, areas that were increasingly important as American law schools expanded attention to environmental justice in the late twentieth century. Her role also extended well beyond the classroom: she advised student organizations, coached the National Environmental Law Moot Court Team, and served in faculty leadership. By joining the faculty in the early 1990s and sustaining that work until retirement in 2019, Perkins helped normalize the idea that environmental law was not a niche subject but a central issue of public policy, community health, and distributive justice.

The historical significance of this appointment lies less in a single dramatic event than in the durable institutional change it helped produce. Perkins’s career shows how women legal academics helped broaden the intellectual agenda of American law schools during a period when questions of sustainability and equity were becoming essential to legal analysis.