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Nevada; and the more-recent attempt in 2016 by the
Bundy family and its armed followers to seize control of
the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge south of Burns.
She worked at the BLM and Interior Department during
the lead-up to the 2014 standoff in Bunkerville, in which
heavily armed supporters of the family prevented federal
employees from seizing cattle that had been grazing on
public land without the payment of grazing fees. In the
end, the government backed off.
“We needed to do more work,” she says of the standoff.
“We had a court order that [Bundy] was in trespass. But it
was an old order.”
The government also needed to work more closely with
the local sheriff and with state authorities, she says.
In the end, that conciliatory approach failed, she admits.
“We did all that work. It still turned into a disaster,” Burke
says. “I didn’t anticipate the number of people who would
turn out to support the Bundys. The family owed almost a
million dollars in grazing fees to you and me, the taxpayers.”
Burke is not exactly a populist on land-use matters. In
2009, she published a paper titled “The Emperor’s New
PUS
Clothes: Exposing the Failures of Regulating Land Use
through the Ballot Box” in the Notre Dame Law Review.
“My concern was that land-use issues — you can take
Malheur refuge as an example — are very complicated and
complex,” she says. “They don’t seem to be appropriate for
yes/no decision making.”
But then, like the good lawyer she is, Burke qualifies
that statement. Actually, she says, a yes/no decision
ultimately does have to be made — sometimes even at
the ballot box — but that decision should culminate a
longer-term process of examining goals and presenting
alternatives, so that the final decision is well informed.
“But you can’t expect voters to research every single
ballot initiative.”
Burke got the idea of becoming a lawyer from watching
Perry Mason on television as a child growing up in Ra-
leigh, N.C., the daughter of two public school educators.
“I liked what I saw,” she says. “Even knowing now that
television wasn’t a very realistic depiction of law. It was
that sense of righting wrongs, the idea that I could bring
my skills to bear to help people.”
Burke, an African-American, will oversee a law school
community that was deeply divided last year when a white
law professor dressed herself in blackface for a Halloween
party at her own home to which law school students were
invited.
The professor later said she was trying to make a point
about racism; some at the law school called for her to be fired.
“‘Unfortunate’ is probably as good a word as any to describe
it,” Burke says. “I am sorry the law school community had to
go through the experience that it did. Some people feel that
not enough was done. Some say too much was done.”
Burke is looking forward rather than back. “How do
we make sure the law school is a place where people are
free to express themselves, and where people still feel
respected?” she says.
At the law school, Burke says she’s still in the “listening
and learning phase of my deanship,” talking with people,
taking the pulse of the community.
At this point, you might say, she’s still singing in the
choir. Any minute, though, you can expect her to step
forward and sing solo.
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