Marcilynn A. Burke

Marcilynn A. Burke is Tulane Law School's Dean and Mitchell Franklin Professor of Law. 

Burke joined Tulane Law in 2024, and is formely the Dean at the University of Oregon School of Law and a former acting assistant secretary for the U.S. Department of the Interior. Burke specializes in property, land use and environmental and natural resources law.  She has published extensively in leading law reviews. Burke earned her bachelor's degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she was a member of Phi Beta Kappa. She earned her juris doctor from Yale Law School, where she was an editor of both the Yale Journal of International Law and the Yale Journal of Law and Feminism.

After law school, Burke clerked for the Honorable Raymond A. Jackson of the Eastern District of Virginia and later joined the law firm of Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton, where her practice focused on environmental law, antitrust and civil and criminal litigation. She also served as a visiting professor at Rutgers School of Law in 2001.

In 2002, Burke joined the law faculty at the University of Houston. From 2009 to 2013, she served in the U.S. Department of the Interior. Initially she was deputy director for programs and policy for the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and then was appointed acting assistant secretary for land and minerals management for the Department by President Barack Obama. In the latter role, she helped develop the land use, resource management and regulatory oversight policies administered by the BLM, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement and the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement.

Following her term at the Department of the Interior, Burke returned to the University of Houston Law Center as an associate professor of law and later served as associate dean. Known for her engaging personality and rapport with students and colleagues alike, she was named professor of the year by the Law Center’s Black Law Students Association. In 2017 she was appointed dean of the University of Oregon’s law school, where she has been hailed as an ambitious, focused and strategic leader. She also currently serves as the chair of the board of trustees for the Law School Admission Council.