Donna Coker is a Professor of Law at the University of Miami School of Law.  She teaches in the areas of criminal law and procedure, evidence, restorative justice, gender violence, social justice lawyering, and crime policy. She has twice received a Provost’s Research Award (2017, 2021). Students awarded her the Hausler Golden Apple teaching award (2015) and the Mary E. Doyle Award (2022) for public service.  She served as the 2023 International Fellow for the Restorative Lab, affiliated with Schulich Law School (Dalhousie University).  She was Academic Associate Dean from 2005-2009.

Professor Coker’s scholarship focuses on criminal law, gender, and race inequality. Her interdisciplinary scholarship has appeared in law reviews and peer reviewed interdisciplinary journals and is included in eight textbooks and seven scholarly anthologies. She is a leading critic of the “crime-centered” response to gender violence. Her widely cited research illustrates the negative impact of this focus on survivors marginalized as a function of poverty, race, and immigration status. She was the co-investigator for a national survey of 900+ service providers regarding police response to domestic violence and sexual assault.  Published in 2015, the survey results were influential in the Department of Justice decision to adopt guidance on gender-biased policing.  She is currently in collaboration with UM Sociology professors and the UM Law Human Rights Program to launch a similar survey in Miami-Dade County, Florida.  Her study of Navajo Peacemaking Courts, published in the UCLA Law Review, was one of the first empirical studies of Peacemaking and the first to focus on domestic violence cases. She frequently advises restorative justice gender violence programs.

Professor Coker regularly engages students in advocacy work and law reform. In 2023, she co-created an innovative law course in which students worked collaboratively with the members of Beyond the Bars, a community-based organization whose members are criminal system-involved persons and their families.

• Education & Experience

Stanford Law School, JD 1991

University of Arkansas at Little Rock, Master of Social Work 1982

Harding University, Bachelor of Social Work, 1978

Curriculum Vitae