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Kami N. Chavis is an American legal scholar who serves as Vice Dean of William & Mary Law School in Williamsburg, Virginia..^[1] She is the R. Hugh and Nolie Haynes Professor of Law and serves as the founding Director of the W&M Center for Criminal Justice Policy and Reform.^[1] Previously, she served as the Associate Dean of Research and Public Engagement at Wake Forest Law School, and as Vice Provost of Wake Forest University.^[2]

Chavis has been a member of the American Law Institute since 2012.^[3] The American Law Institute is an organization of judges, attorneys, and academics that publishes Restatements of the Law, Model Codes, and Principles of Law that are influential for judges and legislatures^[4]

Education and Career

Chavis attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she majored in public policy and African, African American and Diaspora Studies.^[5]She graduated in 1996 with highest honors and as a member of Phi Beta Kappa.^[6] Chavis then attended Harvard Law School, where she was honored as an Earl Warren Scholar.^[7]

After graduating from law school, she worked as an associate at Latham & Watkins and at Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson in Washington, D.C.^[7] She specialized in civil litigation, white-collar criminal defense, and internal investigations.^[1] In 2003, she became an Assistant United States Attorney for the District of Columbia, where she prosecuted criminal cases and briefed and argued appeals in the District of Columbia Court of Appeals.^[8]

After serving as a prosecutor, Chavis became a professor at Wake Forest Law School in 2006, and was promoted to a full professor in 2012.^[[7] At Wake Forest, Chavis founded and served as the inaugural director of the university’s Criminal Justice Program.^[9] In 2017, Chavis was promoted to Associate Provost for Academic Initiatives^[10]. She served in that role until she was named the Vice Provost of Wake Forest University in 2020.^[[9]

At Wake Forest, Chavis was the cofounder and cochair of the Steering Committee of Wake Forest’s Slavery, Race and Memory Project.^[2][ In 2020, Chavis contributed to the project’s publication, To Stand With and For Humanity.^[11] In 2015 and 2016, Chavis served as the faculty advisor for the Wake Forest Law Review.^[12] Wake Forest established the Police Accountability Task Force in 2014, where Chavis served as its chair.^[[13]

From 2015 to 2017, Chavis served as a Senior Academic Fellow at the Joint Center for Political And Economic Studies, a public policy think tank that provides training and technical assistance to newly elected African American officials.^[14]

On January 19, 2022, Paul Marcus, William & Mary Law School’s R. Hugh and Nolie Haynes Professor of Law, announced that he would retire at the end of the academic year.^[15] That same day, William & Mary Law School announced that Chavis would fill Marcus’s role as the Haynes Professor of Law.^[7] On June 29, 2023, William & Mary Law School announced that Chavis was appointed as Vice Dean, a role she has served in since.^[2]

Chavis founded and serves as the director of William & Mary Law School’s Center for Criminal Justice Policy and Reform.^[16] The Center encourages scholarly discourse and research on the American Criminal Justice System. ^[17] Its five pillars of focus are ensuring democratic policing, advancing prosecutorial ethics, addressing community violence without contributing to mass incarceration, examining the responsible use of technology in law enforcement, and implementing transparency in jury selection.^[17]

In addition to teaching at Wake Forest and William & Mary, Chavis has served as a visiting professor at the University of Texas School of Law, the George Washington University School of Law, and the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law.^[18]

Publications and Commentary

Chavis is a leading expert in police and prosecutorial accountability and has written many scholarly articles on the subject.^[3] As a high school student, the beating of Rodney King affected Chavis deeply and led her to focus on police accountability in her later career.^[[5]

In her article Beginning to End Racial Profiling: Definitive Solutions to an Elusive Problem, Chavis argues that racial profiling is difficult to prove through traditional legal methods, but its widespread perception undermines trust between police and communities. ^[19] She proposes that institutions and policymakers take proactive measures such as implementing federal and state legislation specifically addressing racial profiling and the Department of Justice using its “pattern or practice” authority to combat racial profiling.^[19]

In her article Body-Worn Cameras: Exploring the Unintentional Consequences of Technological Advances and Ensuring a Role for Community Consultation, Chavis contends that body-worn-cameras are an important tool in deterring police misconduct, but they are not sufficient in achieving reform alone^[20]. She argues that body-worn-cameras present privacy concerns that may exacerbate tensions in over-policed communities, and that further reforms, such as establishing a national database of police shootings and requiring independent investigations of officer-involved fatalities, are needed.^[20]

Chavis argues in her article Increasing Police Accountability: Restoring Trust and Legitimacy Through the Appointment of Independent Prosecutors that local prosecutors face inherent conflicts of interest when prosecuting police officers due to their close working relationships and reliance on police for evidence and testimony.^[21] She proposes appointing independent prosecutors to prosecute cases involving police use of deadly force to restore accountability and legitimacy in the criminal justice process.^[21]

Chavis argues in the article Cooperative Federalism and Police Reform: Using Congressional Spending Power to Promote Police Accountability that Congress should condition federal law enforcement funding on states implementing police accountability measures.^[22] Specifically, she advocates amending the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) program to withhold 5% of funding from states failing to implement reforms, which allows states to design their own standards while meeting federal minimum guidelines.^[22]

In Chavis’s article New Governance and the “New Paradigm” of Police Accountability: A Democratic Approach to Police Reform, she contends that traditional approaches to police reform fail to address systemic police misconduct because they don’t change the underlying organizational culture of police departments.^[23] She advocates for using a bottom-up approach that uses stakeholder participation (involving both community members and police officers), local experimentation, and collaborative problem-solving rather than top-down federal mandates.^[23]

Chavis is also a co-author of Criminal Law: A Context and Practice Casebook, a textbook used in criminal law classes.^[24]

In 2016, as co-chair of the Constitution Project Committee on Policing Reforms, Chavis helped develop the report “Demilitarizing America's Police: A Constitutional Analysis.”^[25] The report discusses the increasing use of military equipment, tactics, and culture in local law enforcement, and argues that this trend disproportionately harms communities of color through aggressive policing.^[25]

In addition to her scholarly work, Chavis has also written for major media outlets such as the New York Times.^[26]and the Huffington Post.^[27] In her article Bias Can Strain an Already Difficult Standard in Prosecuting Police, Chavis argues that racial bias among juries makes them more likely to justify the use of lethal force against minority citizens.^[26] Chavis argues in her article Why Are Hate Crimes So Difficult to Prosecute? that prosecutors have difficulty proving that the defendant’s bias motivated the crime they are charged with^[27]

Chavis has also provided expert testimony for legislative efforts to promote police accountability. Her written testimony on independent prosecutors was used by the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing in their report. ^[28] She also provided testimony discussing law enforcement accountability and culture for the North Carolina Governor’s Task Force for Racial Equity in Criminal Justice.^[29]

Chavis frequently speaks at national conferences and presents on issues related to police reform and accountability.^[30] She has participated in round-table discussions and spoke at conferences held by George Washington University,^[31] the Wilson Center for Science and Justice at Duke Law School^[32], the National Association for Criminal Defense Lawyers, and the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions^[33], among others.