Professor Theodore “Ted” M. Shaw, the Julius L. Chambers Distinguished Professor of Law and director of the UNC Center for Civil Rights at UNC School of Law, has been honored with the prestigious Thurgood Marshall Lifetime Achievement Award from the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF). The award, presented at LDF’s 36th National Equal Justice Awards Dinner on May 16, 2024, in New York City, coincides with the 70th anniversary of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision.
Shaw’s illustrious career began at Columbia University Law School, where he attended as a Charles Evans Hughes Fellow. After graduating, he served as a trial attorney in the Honors Program of the U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division in Washington, D.C. In 1982, Shaw joined the staff of the LDF, embarking on a 26-year journey that would see him litigate cases related to elementary, secondary, and higher education, housing, voting rights, and capital punishment, as well as direct LDF’s education docket. Under the guidance of LDF’s third Director-Counsel, Julius Chambers, Shaw established LDF’s Western Regional Office in Los Angeles in 1987. He returned to LDF in 1993 and ascended to the role of its fifth director-counsel in 2004.
Throughout his 40-year career, Shaw has tirelessly dedicated himself to harnessing the power of the law to address racial, social, and economic inequalities. His passion for justice shone through in his role as lead counsel representing Black and Latino students in defense of the constitutionality of the University of Michigan’s admissions program, where his arguments were instrumental in establishing the importance of diversity in higher education.
At Carolina Law, Shaw imparts his knowledge to students through courses on civil procedure, advanced constitutional law/Fourteenth Amendment, election law, and social justice lawyering, while his research delves into the intricacies of the Fourteenth Amendment, affirmative action, and housing policies related to fair housing. Shaw’s scholarly publications have earned him numerous accolades, including the 2012 Harlem Neighborhood Defenders Office W. Haywood Burns Humanitarian Award and the 2012 Office of the Appellate Defender Milton S. Gould Award for Outstanding Advocacy.
The Thurgood Marshall Lifetime Achievement Award honors Shaw’s unrelenting dedication to social justice and his capacity to inspire and teach future generations of attorneys. This well-deserved prize recognizes his career-long commitment to using the transformational potential of the law for the greater good.
