Levin College of Law

Kenneth B. Nunn

Emeritus Dr. Patricia Hilliard-Nunn Memorial Racial Justice Term Professor
Emeritus Professor of Law

Phone:
(352) 273-0660

About

Kenneth Nunn served as the Emeritus Dr. Patricia Hilliard-Nunn Memorial Racial Justice Term Professor and was the Associate Director of the Center on Children and Families at UF Law. Professor Nunn joined the UF Law faculty in 1990 and has twice been named “teacher of the year.” His teaching and scholarship expertise lies in the fields of Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure, Race Relations and the Law, Police Brutality, Race and the Criminal Process, Cultural Studies, and African and Africa-centered thought. Along with Sharon Rush, he co-founded the Center for the Study of Race and Race Relations, one of a few law school centers that focus on race. He previously worked as a public defender in San Francisco and Washington, DC and as a staff attorney at the Southern Africa Project. Professor Nunn has published a variety of written works, including several book chapters and various articles on topics such as race, diversity, critical theories and human injustice. He was a member of the Florida Innocence Commission that was established to suggest changes in Florida law to avoid wrongful convictions. He has also taught as a visiting law faculty member at Washington and Lee University School of Law, Florida A&M University College of Law and at Makerere University in Uganda. Professor Nunn is an Affiliate Professor in the UF Center for African Studies and in the UF African American Studies Program.

He received his J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley.

Education

J.D., University of California, Berkeley
A.B., Stanford University

Teaching and Scholarship

Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure, African American History and the Law, African Traditional Law, Police Brutality, Race and the Criminal Process and Law and Cultural Studies.

Courses

  • Criminal Law
  • Criminal Procedure: Police and Police Practices

Publications

Books

  • Associate Editor for Law and Society, MacMillan Encyclopedia of Race and Racism (Thomson Pub., 2007).

Chapters in Books

  • “Sankofa and the Congo: Fu-Kian, African Consciousness, and Nation Building in the African Diaspora,” in Revisiting African Studies in a Globalized World (Albert K. Awedoba, et
    al., eds.) (Univ. of Ghana Press, 2017)
  • “The Black Nationalist Cure to Disproportionate Minority Contact,” in Justice For Kids: Keeping Kids Out of the Juvenile Justice System (Nancy Dowd, ed.) (NYU Press, 2011)
  • “Still Up On the Roof: Race, Victimology and the Response to Hurricane Katrina,” in Hurricane Katrina: America’s Unnatural Disaster(Jeremy I. Levitt & Matthew C. Whitaker, eds.) (Univ. of Nebraska Press, 2009).
  • “Rosewood,” in When Sorry Isn’t Enough: The Controversy over Apologies and Reparations for Human Injustices (Roy L. Brooks, ed., 1999).

Articles

  • “Essentially Black”: Legal Theory and the Morality of Conscious Racial Identity,” 97 Neb. L. Rev. 287 (2018). [SSRN]
  • “Ideology, Gentile and Pretrial Attorney Speech: A Response to Professor Tarkington,” 66 Fla. L. Rev. Forum 35 (2015). [SSRN]
  • “The ‘R-Word’: A Tribute to Derrick Bell,” 22 Fla. J.L. & Pub. Pol’y 431 (2011).
  • “Diversity As a Dead End,” 35 Pepp. L. Rev. 705 (2008).
  • “Foreword: New Explorations in Culture and Crime—Definitions, Theory, Method,” 17 Fla. J.L. & Pub. Pol’y vii (2006).
  • “Diversity Matters: Race, Gender & Ethnicity in Legal Education,” 15 Fla. J.L. & Pub. Pol’y 11 (2003). [SSRN]
  • “Race, Crime and the Pool of Surplus Criminality: Or Why the War on Drugs Was a War on Blacks,” 6 Iowa J. Gender Race & Just. 381 (2002), excerpted and reprinted in Structured Inequality in the United States: Critical Discussions on the Continuing Significance of Race, Ethnicity and Gender (Aguirre & Baker, eds., 2d ed. 2007).
  • “The Child as Other’: Race and Differential Treatment in the Juvenile Justice System,” 51 DePaul L. Rev. 679 (2002). [SSRN]
  • “The ‘Darden Dilemma’: Should African Americans Prosecute Crimes?” 68 Fordham L. Rev. 1473 (2000).
  • “Law, Culture, and the Morality of Judicial Choice,” 28 Cumberland L. Rev. 581 (1998).
  • “Illegal Aliens: Extraterrestrials and White Fear,” 48 Fla. L. Rev. 397 (1997).
  • “Law as a Eurocentric Enterprise,” 15 Law & Ineq. 323 (1997), reprinted in Critical Race Theory: The Cutting Edge (Delgado & Stefancic, eds., 2d ed. 2000).

Other Publications

  • “Racism Is the Problem, Not Stand Your Ground Laws – Room For Debate,” N.Y. Times, (March 21, 2012).
  • “Minority Groups,” World Book Encyclopedia (2003).
  • “Racial Profiling,” World Book Encyclopedia (2002).
  • “Stereotyping,” World Book Encyclopedia (2002).
  • “Racism,” World Book Encyclopedia (2001).

 See vita for complete list of publications.