Greetings from the CrimProfs at the University of San Diego!

In  my time at the University of San Diego School of Law, I’ve had the privilege of working with highly talented colleagues across a broad range of subject matters. In my own areas of special interest--criminal law and procedure--I have been especially fortunate, and I am delighted that my current CrimProf colleagues have joined me in assuming the editorship of the CrimProf blog. We hope to continue the success of the previous editors in making this blog a valuable resource for teachers and others in these fields.

 

Larry Alexander spends a fair amount of his time writing generally about jurisprudence and constitutional law, but he has a special interest in criminal law, reflected in more articles than I can count and, most recently, in his book (with Kimberly Kessler Ferzan), “Crime and Culpability: A Theory of Criminal Law” (published by Cambridge University Press).

Don Dripps joined our faculty after holding an appointment as James Annenberg Levee Professor of Criminal Procedure at the University of Minnesota Law School. His interests run both to substantive and procedural criminal law. His most recent work includes “Recreational Drug Regulation: A Plea for Responsibility" and “The 'New' Exclusionary Rule Debate: From 'Still Preoccupied with 1985' to 'Virtual Deterrence'", and I am a great admirer of his 2002 book, “About Guilt and Innocence: The Origins, Development, and Future of Constitutional Criminal Procedure.” 

Yale Kamisar taught Don when Don was a student at Michigan Law School, where Yale was the Clarence Darrow Distinguished University Professor. And he taught many of us who were not his students through his casebook, “Modern Criminal Procedure: Cases, Comments & Questions,” first published in 1965 and now in its 12th edition (coauthored with Wayne LaFave, Jerold Israel and Nancy King). Yale holds a tenuired half-year appointment at USD, spending his spring semesters with us. Known as the “Father of Miranda,” Yale continues to produce important work in the field of criminal procedure.

Adam Kolber, a newly tenured member of our faculty, also edits the "Neuroethics & Law Blog." In his brief time in the academy, he has already produced several intriguing pieces of criminal law scholarship, including The Subjective Experience of Punishment, published at Columbia Law Review, Vol. 109, p. 182, and The Comparative Nature of Punishment, forthcoming in the Boston University Law Review.

 

Jean Ramirez joined our faculty in 1990 after a stint as a deputy public defender with the Los Angeles County Public Defender’s Office. She has been on the Defender Board, overseeing Appellate Defenders, Inc., and Federal Defenders of San Diego, Inc., since 2002. She is currently revising and updating Criminal Litigation in Action (with Professor Laura Berend), a criminal practice primer for law students and recent graduates, originally published in 2002 with NITA. She discusses the training of law students for criminal law practice in the article, The University of San Diego Criminal Clinic: It’s All in th Mix, 74 Mississippi Law Journal 1021-1042 (2005).

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