Robinson O. Everett

Robinson O. Everett (March 18, 1928 – June 12, 2009) was an American lawyer, judge and a professor of law at Duke University.

Everett was born in Durham, North Carolina, to a family of lawyers: his grandfather and both of his parents being noted North Carolina attorneys. His father, Reuben Oscar Everett, was one of the first five law students at Duke and practiced law for 66 years until his death, in his law office, at age 92. His mother, Kathrine Everett, was one of the first women to graduate from the University of North Carolina School of Law, where she ranked at the head of her class and was the first woman to argue and win a case before the North Carolina Supreme Court. She practiced for 70 years, retiring at the age of 97. In 1954, the Everetts were the first family of lawyers sworn in together to the bar of the Supreme Court of the United States.

Robinson O. Everett graduated magna cum laude in 1947 from Harvard University, at age 19. At Harvard Law School he was on the Harvard Law Review, graduating magna cum laude in 1950. He received his Master of Laws from Duke University School of Law. He was admitted to the North Carolina bar and joined the Duke's law school faculty that same year at age twenty-two, and holds the record as the youngest faculty member in Duke's history. He earned a master of laws degree from Duke in 1959. In over fifty years of teaching at Duke (as well as at the University of North Carolina School of Law and Wake Forest University School of Law), Everett regularly taught courses in criminal law, criminal procedure, law and national defense and military law.