Jacob D. Charles
Biography
Professor Jake Charles is a constitutional law scholar focusing on the Second Amendment and firearms law. He joined Pepperdine Caruso Law after serving as the inaugural executive director of the Center for Firearms Law at Duke University School of Law, where he remains an affiliated scholar. He previously served as the Chair of the Section on Firearms Law of the American Association of Law Schools. Professor Charles’s primary research interests include the legal regulation of state and private violence, Second Amendment doctrine and theory, and the place of guns in the criminal legal system. He is the co-author of a forthcoming Foundation Press casebook on the Second Amendment and co-editor of a recent Oxford University Press collection of historical essays on gun laws. His scholarship has appeared or is forthcoming in the Columbia Law Review, Michigan Law Review, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Virginia Law Review, and Duke Law Journal, among others. His articles have been cited in numerous court decisions across the country, including in federal court of appeals and state supreme court rulings on novel Second Amendment questions.
Professor Charles frequently comments on legal issues surrounding firearm law and politics. His writing for popular audiences has appeared in The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Slate, The Hill, Bloomberg Law, and other outlets, and he has been interviewed for news stories in the New York Times, CNN, NPR, Politifact, and others. He has also been invited to speak in numerous public fora about the Second Amendment and the debates over the history, law, and politics of the right to keep and bear arms.
Professor Charles practiced law in the Washington, D.C., office of O’Melveny & Myers LLP, where his practice focused on defending clients during government and criminal investigations, and in the appellate and products liability practice groups at McGuireWoods LLP in Raleigh, North Carolina. He clerked for Judge Allyson K. Duncan of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and Judge Colleen McMahon of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
Professor Charles graduated magna cum laude from Duke Law School. During law school, he served as notes editor for the Duke Law Journal and was elected to the Order of the Coif. He also holds an M.A. in political science with an emphasis in normative political theory and political institutions from Duke University. Prior to law school, Professor Charles earned M.A. degrees in theology and philosophy from Biola University and a bachelor’s degree in criminology, law, and society & psychology and social behavior from the University of California, Irvine.
Education
- J.D., Duke University, 2013, magna cum laude
- M.A., Duke University, 2013
- M.A., Biola University, 2010
- M.A., Biola University, 2010
- B.A., University of California, Irvine, 2007, magna cum laude
Areas of Expertise
- Second Amendment
- Firearms Law
- Gun Rights, Regulation, and Policy
- Regulation of State and Private Violence
Courses
- Torts
- Second Amendment Seminar
- Ethical Lawyering