Joined the faculty in 1990. Clerked for Judge Walter R. Mansfield, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Practiced employment law in Raleigh. Served as the Goldberg Distinguished Visiting Professor at Cornell Law School in 2007, and as a visiting professor at the law schools of the University of Iowa, Emory University, University of Auckland and University of Melbourne. Also served as Director of William & Mary's Institute of Bill of Rights Law, 1997-2004, and as the founding Director of William & Mary's Election Law Program.

Author or editor of several books, including Jim Crow Moves North: The Battle Over Northern School Segregation, 1865-1954 (2005) and Reading, Writing and Race: The Desegregation of the Charlotte Schools (1995), and numerous articles including ones in the Michigan, Northwestern, Texas, UCLA, Wake Forest, and William and Mary law reviews. Has lectured on American constitutional law and history at various universities in the United States, Africa, Asia, Australia, and Europe.

Received the Black Law Students Association Outstanding Faculty Award in 2004. Recipient of the State Council of Higher Education Outstanding Faculty Award in 2002 (one of eleven recipients throughout the state of Virginia) and the Walter L. Williams, Jr. Teaching Award in 1993, 1995, 1999, 2001 and 2006 as the law school's outstanding teacher. Received the William and Mary Phi Beta Kappa Faculty Award for Advancement of Scholarship in 1995.