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Albert Alschuler

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Albert W. Alschuler
Born (1940-09-24) September 24, 1940 (age 84)
Aurora, Illinois
NationalityAmerican
Occupation(s)Lawyer, academic, and author
Academic background
EducationHarvard College (AB)
Harvard Law School (LL.B)
Academic work
InstitutionsThe University of Texas School of Law
The University of Colorado Law School
The University of Pennsylvania Law School
The University of Chicago Law School

Albert W. Alschuler is an American legal scholar best known for his work in criminal procedure and criminal law. He is the Julius Kreeger Professor Emeritus at the University of Chicago Law School. He previously taught at the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Colorado, and the University of Pennsylvania, and is known particularly for a study of plea bargaining.[1]

Early life and education

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Alschuler was born in Aurora, Illinois on September 24, 1940. His father, Sam Alschuler, was an Aurora lawyer and his mother, Winifred King Alschuler, a teacher and homemaker.[2] He attended public schools in Aurora and graduated from Harvard College in 1962. In 1965, he graduated from the Harvard Law School where he was an officer of the Harvard Law Review.[3]

Career

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Alschuler was a law clerk to Illinois Supreme Court Justice Walter V. Schaefer and a special assistant to Fred M. Vinson Jr., United States Assistant Attorney General in Charge of the United States Department of Justice Criminal Division. He began his academic career in 1966 as an assistant professor at The University of Texas School of Law, and was promoted to full professor in 1969. From 1976 through 1984, he was a professor at the University of Colorado Law School. He taught briefly at the University of Pennsylvania before joining the University of Chicago Law School faculty in 1985. At Chicago, he was promoted to Wilson-Dickinson Professor in 1988 and to Julius Kreeger Professor in 2002. After taking emeritus status at Chicago in 2006, he became a professor of law at Northwestern University for five years and then retired.[4]

Research

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Plea bargaining

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Alschuler's interviews with lawyers and judges in ten American cities in the 1960s led to his studies of the prosecutor's,[5] defense attorney's,[6] and trial judge's[7] roles in plea bargaining. He reported that prosecutors fearing defeat at trial brought extraordinary pressure to plead guilty on defendants who might be innocent, that some defense attorneys pocketed small fees in advance and pressed nearly all of their clients to plead guilty, and that many trial judges allowed bargaining prosecutors to determine nearly all criminal sentences. Returning to the topic fifty years after his first study, he described plea bargaining as a nearly perfect device for convicting the innocent[8] and as a major cause of mass incarceration.[9]

Other criminal justice issues

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Alschuler was an early critic of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines.[10] He later contended that, from any coherent normative perspective, these guidelines increased sentence disparity.[11] He described the rule barring the use of illegally obtained evidence as one of the law's success stories[12] but called the Supreme Court's ruling in Miranda v. Arizona a failure.[13] In a paper that received the Green Bag Exemplary Legal Writing Award, he advocated limiting corporate criminal liability, comparing it to the practice of punishing inanimate objects.[14] Among the other subjects he addressed were racial profiling,[15] discriminatory jury selection,[16] police hunches,[17] bribery standards,[18] courtroom misconduct,[19] preventive pretrial detention,[20] the limits of the presidential pardon power,[21] the ethics of the O.J. Simpson defense team,[22] the criminality of Donald Trump,[23] and the changing purposes of criminal punishment.[24]

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In an award-winning work, Rediscovering Blackstone, Alschuler described the impact of Sir William Blackstone's work on American law and defended Blackstone's jurisprudence against modern critics.[25] In Law Without Values: The Life, Work, and Legacy of Justice Holmes, he examined how Holmes’ moral skepticism dominated his opinions and scholarly writings.[26] Judge Morris B. Hoffman commended this study as "stunningly new and original."[27]

Together with Andrew G. Deiss, Alschuler examined the history of the criminal jury in the United States, chronicling how the jury's influence on American civic life declined as its composition became more democratic.[28] With Richard Helmholz and others, he described how the privilege against self-incrimination changed from one doctrine to another without much recognition of its sharp transformations.[29]

Awards and honors

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Bibliography

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Books

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  • The Privilege against Self-Incrimination: Its Origins and Development (1997) ISBN 978-0226326603 (with R. H. Helmholz, Charles Gray, John H. Langbein, Eben Moglen & Henry Smith)
  • Law Without Values: The Life, Work, and Legacy of Justice Holmes (2000) ISBN 978-0226015200

Selected articles

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  • Alschuler, A. W. (1968). The prosecutor's role in plea bargaining. The University of Chicago Law Review, 36, 50–112.
  • Alschuler, A. W. (1975). The defense attorney's role in plea bargaining. The Yale Law Journal, 84, 1179–1314.
  • Alschuler, A.W. (1976). The trial judge's role in plea bargaining. Columbia Law Review, 76, 1059–1154.
  • Alschuler, A. W. (1979). Plea bargaining and its history. Columbia Law Review, 79, 1-43.
  • Alschuler, A. W. (1983). Implementing the criminal defendant's right to trial: Alternatives to the plea bargaining system. The University of Chicago Law Review, 50, 931–1050.
  • Alschuler, A. W., & Deiss, A. G. (1994). A brief history of the criminal jury in the United States. The University of Chicago Law Review, 61, 867–928.
  • Alschuler, A. W. (2017). Miranda's fourfold failure. Boston University Law Review, 97, 849–91.
  • Alschuler, A. W. (2021). Plea bargaining and mass incarceration. New York University Annual Survey of American Law, 76, 205–34.

References

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  1. ^ "Albert Alschuler | University of Chicago Law School". www.law.uchicago.edu.
  2. ^ "Sam Alschuler". Chicago Tribune.
  3. ^ "Alschuler, Albert W. 1940– | Encyclopedia.com". www.encyclopedia.com.
  4. ^ "Dean Welcomes Students Back for Spring Term". Northwestern Law.
  5. ^ Alschuler, Albert W. (1968). "The Prosecutor's Role in Plea Bargaining". The University of Chicago Law Review. 36 (1): 50–112. doi:10.2307/1598832. JSTOR 1598832 – via JSTOR.
  6. ^ Alschuler, Albert W. (1975). "The Defense Attorney's Role in Plea Bargaining". The Yale Law Journal. 84 (6): 1179–1314. doi:10.2307/795498. JSTOR 795498 – via JSTOR.
  7. ^ Alschuler, Albert W. (1976). "The Trial Judge's Role in Plea Bargaining, Part I". Columbia Law Review. 76 (7): 1059–1154. doi:10.2307/1121673. JSTOR 1121673 – via JSTOR.
  8. ^ "A Nearly Perfect System for Convicting the Innocent".
  9. ^ "PLEA BARGAINING AND MASS INCARCERATION" (PDF).
  10. ^ Alschuler, Albert W. (1991). "The Failure of Sentencing Guidelines: A Plea for Less Aggregation". The University of Chicago Law Review. 58 (3): 901–951. doi:10.2307/1599992. JSTOR 1599992 – via JSTOR.
  11. ^ "DISPARITY:THE NORMATIVE AND EMPIRICAL FAILURE OF THE FEDERAL GUIDELINES" (PDF).
  12. ^ "Studying the Exclusionary Rule: An Empirical Classic".
  13. ^ Alschuler, Albert W. (May 11, 2017). "Miranda's Fourfold Failure". SSRN 2969143 – via papers.ssrn.com.
  14. ^ Alschuler, Albert (January 1, 2009). "Two Ways to Think about the Punishment of Corporations". American Criminal Law Review. 46: 1359.
  15. ^ Alschuler, Albert (January 1, 2002). "Racial Profiling and the Constitution The Scope of Equal Protection". University of Chicago Legal Forum. 2002: 163.
  16. ^ Alschuler, Albert (February 1, 1995). "Racial Quotas and the Jury". Duke Law Journal. 44 (4): 704–743. doi:10.2307/1372922. JSTOR 1372922.
  17. ^ Alschuler, Albert (January 1, 2007). "The Upside and Downside of Police Hunches and Expertise". Journal of Law, Economics, and Policy. 4: 115.
  18. ^ Alschuler, Albert W. (January 26, 2015). "Criminal Corruption: Why Broad Definitions of Bribery Make Things Worse". SSRN 2555912 – via papers.ssrn.com.
  19. ^ Alschuler, Albert W. "Courtroom Misconduct by Prosecutors and Trial Judges". Texas Law Review. 50: 629.
  20. ^ Alschuler, Albert (December 1, 1986). "Preventative Pretrial Detention and the Failure of Interest-Balancing Approaches to Due Process". Michigan Law Review. 85 (3): 510–569. doi:10.2307/1288756. JSTOR 1288756.
  21. ^ Alschuler, Albert (January 1, 2022). "The Corruption of the Pardon Power". Public Law & Legal Theory.
  22. ^ "How to Win the Trial of the Century: The Ethics of Lord Brougham and the O. J. Simpson Defense Team".
  23. ^ Alschuler, Albert W. (August 19, 2022). "Seditious Conspiracy vs. Insurrection: Assessing the Evidence Against Trump". Just Security.
  24. ^ Alschuler, Albert (January 1, 2003). "The Changing Purposes of Criminal Punishment: A Retrospective on the past Century and Some Thoughts about the Next". University of Chicago Law Review. 70 (1): 1–22. doi:10.2307/1600541. JSTOR 1600541.
  25. ^ Alschuler, Albert (January 1, 1996). "Rediscovering Blackstone". University of Pennsylvania Law Review. 145 (1): 1–55. doi:10.2307/3312712. JSTOR 3312712.
  26. ^ Rosenberg, Norman L. "Life As War - Albert W. Alschuler: Law without Values: The Life, Work, and Legacy of Justice Holmes. – The Review of Politics". The Review of Politics. 63 (4): 842–844. doi:10.1017/S0034670500032307. S2CID 145530833.
  27. ^ Hoffman, Morris B. (December 1, 2001). "Law Without Values: The Life, Work, and Legacy of Justice Holmes". Stanford Law Review. 54 (3): 597–626. doi:10.2307/1229467. JSTOR 1229467 – via go.gale.com.
  28. ^ Alschuler, Albert W.; Deiss, Andrew G. (1994). "A Brief History of the Criminal Jury in the United States". The University of Chicago Law Review. 61 (3): 867–928. doi:10.2307/1600170. JSTOR 1600170 – via JSTOR.
  29. ^ Helmholz, R. H.; Gray, Charles M.; Langbein, John H.; Moglen, Eben; Smith, Henry E. The Privilege against Self-Incrimination: Its Origins and Development. University of Chicago Press.
  30. ^ "Sutherland Prize | American Society for Legal History". November 27, 2018.
  31. ^ "Law School welcomes Spring 2009 visitors | NYU School of Law". www.law.nyu.edu.
  32. ^ "Almanac & Reader". www.greenbag.org.
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