Todd C. Peppers

I am presently an attorney at the law firm of Hawkins Parnell and Young in Atlanta Georgia. Before returning to the practice of law, I was 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. Recently, I published a third volume of essays on lower court clerks and their judges.

Several years ago, I wrote 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.

My research on "A Courageous Fool" introduced me to Russ Ford, the former head chaplain of the Virginia State Penitentiary and by extension death row. I was very moved by Russ' work on the row, which led to our new book, "Crossing the River Styx" written with Russ Ford and my son, Charles.

I am now working on the official biography of Chief Justice Warren Burger.