Todd C. Peppers

I am a professor of political science in the Department of Public Affairs at Roanoke College in Salem, Virginia as well as a visiting professor of law at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia. As a researcher and author, I write about judicial institutions, legal history, and capital punishment. Specifically, my interest in the history of law clerks in the federal judiciary was triggered by serving as a law clerk to a federal district court judge in Omaha, Nebraska and a federal magistrate judge in Roanoke, Virginia; my interest in capital punishment was sparked by a chance encounter with Laura Anderson, who served as a spiritual adviser to a death row inmate named Douglas Christopher Thomas. Chris's story can be found in our book "Anatomy of an Execution: The Life and Death of Douglas Christopher Thomas," which was published in the fall of 2009 by Northeastern University Press. If you are interested in law clerks, then you might like my first book "Courtiers of the Marble Palace: The Rise and Influence of the Supreme Court Law Clerk" (Stanford University Press, 2006). I continue to write about law clerks, and many of my articles can be found in the Journal of Supreme Court History. In March of 2012, University of Virginia Press published "In Chambers: Stories of Supreme Court Law Clerks and Their Justices." It is a series of essays about law clerks and their justices, and the volume was edited by myself and Artemus Ward. In December of 2015, the University of Virginia Press published "Of Courtiers and Kings: More Stories of Supreme Court Law Clerks and Their Justices." This second volume of essays was co-edited by myself and Clare Cushman of the Supreme Court Historical Society. I just finished a biography on Marie McFadden Deans, who at one time was one of the most prominent death penalty opponents in the United States. During her career, Marie worked as a mitigation specialist on over 200 capital murder trials and stood "death watch" with 34 men on death row in Virginia and South Carolina. The book is titled "A Courageous Fool" and was published by Vanderbilt University Press in 2017. My co-author for the project is Margaret Anderson, a former student who now works in local government in Richmond, Virginia. I am presently working on several book projects. An edited volume of essays about lower federal court and state court law clerks will be published in 2020 by the University of Virginia Press. I am also working on biographies of Joseph Giarratano, a former Virginia death row inmate who was released from prison in December of 2017, and of Russ Ford, former chaplain at the Virginia State Penitentiary.