Courses

Criminal Procedure, Criminal Law, Evidence, and Professional Responsibility

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Biography

Professor Andrew E. Taslitz, over the course of his eighteen years in legal academia, has taught at Duke University, Villanova University, and, of course, Howard University. His courses usually include Criminal Procedure, Criminal Law, and Evidence, though he has also taught Advanced Criminal Procedure (Bail to Jail), Professional Responsibility, Wrongful Convictions, Advanced Evidence, and Proof of Facts, and, in the spring of 2007, will be teaching Terrorism and the Law.

Professor Taslitz is a cum laude graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and, before entering teaching, worked both as a prosecutor in Philadelphia and as an associate at one of the largest and most public-interested-minded civil firms in Philadlephia, PA., Schnader, Harrison, Segal, and Lewis. He writes in the areas in which he teaches and in the area of free speech. His writings have particularly centered on search and seizure issues, wrongful convictions, sexual assault, hate crimes legislation, and scientific and character evidence, though he is increasingly writing on a wide variety of constitutional issues beyond these topics. His current emphases are on constitutional history, the implications of the teachings of cognitive science for criminal procedure and substantive criminal law, the role of race in the criminal justice system, and mechanisms for expanding and improving criminal justice system deliberative processes.

Professor Taslitz is the author of five books, most recently the forthcoming Reconstructing the Fourth Amendment: A History of Search and Seizure, 1789-1868 (scheduled release date, NYU Press, October 1, 2006). His other books are Rape and the Culture of the Courtroom (1999), and three co-authored books, Constitutional Criminal Procedure (2d ed. 2003), Evidence Law and Practice (2d ed. 2004), and Criminal Law: Concepts and Practice (2005), as well as these last three books’ accompanying teachers’ manuals and supplements. He is also under contract to co-author a two volume hornbook set, Mastering Criminal Procedure: Investigation, and Mastering Criminal Procedure: Prosecution, both of which are scheduled for release in 2008. He has additionally authored several book chapters, most recently, The Jury and the Common Good: Fusing the Insights of Modernism and Postmodernism, in For the Common Good: A Critical Examination of Law and Social Norms (Robin Miller ed. 2004), and the forthcoming tentatively titled, Ending Slavery Did Not Kill the Slave Power: Criminal Justice Successes and Failures of the Thirteenth Amendment, in The Promises of Liberty: Thirteenth Amendment Abolitionism (Alexander Tsesis ed., Columbia University Press 2008).

Professor Taslitz has published 52 articles, including 33 law review articles, 7 book reviews, and 12 articles addressed primarily to the practicing bar. These articles cover a wide range of subjects, ranging from the First Amendment implications of hate crimes legislation and the political aspects of search and seizure law to changing criminal justice paradigms in the war on terrorism and self-deception in sexual assault, and also including sentencing policy, new approaches to the Confrontation Clause, and feminist approaches to evidence law. He has also published several encyclopedia entries, including one on mob violence and vigilantism and one on criminal practice in the prestigious Oxford Companion to American Law, as well as forthcoming entries on hearsay and civil liberties, sex and criminal justice, and confrontation rights in the forthcoming Encyclopedia of Civil Liberties to be published by Routledge. His most recently-published articles include Temporal Adversarialism, Criminal Justice, and the Rehnquist Court: the Sluggish Life of Political Factfinding, 94 Geo. L.J. 1589 (2006); Willfully Blinded: On Date Rape and Self-Deception, 28 Harv. J.L. & Gender 381 (2005); and Fortune-Telling and the Fourth Amendment: Of Terrorism, Slippery Slopes, and Predicting the Future, 58 Rutgers L. Rev. 195 (2005). He has several forthcoming articles nearing publication, including The Expressive Fourth Amendment: Rethinking the Good Faith Exception to the Exclusionary Rule; Wrongly Accused: Is Race a Risk Factor in Convicting the Innocent?; and Eyewitness Identification, Democratic Deliberation, and the Politics of Science. In addition to working on articles in the areas of confessions, race and criminal justice, and criminal justice contributions to an informed citizenry for various symposia, Professor Taslitz is concentrating on several pieces on peoplehood and collective rights in the constitutional law of search and seizure.

Professor Taslitz has co-authored a variety of high-profile reports, including Mandatory Justice: the Death Penalty Revisited for the Constitution Project (2006); the Legal Appendix to Containing the Threat from Illegal Bombings: An Integrated National Strategy for Marking, Tagging, Rendering Inert, and Licensing Explosives and Their Precursors (1998), for the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences in the wake of the Oklahoma City Bombing; and the Eyewitness Identification portion of Achieving Justice: Freeing the Innocent, Convicting the Guilty: The Report of the ABA Criminal Justice Section’s Ad Hoc Innocence Committee to Ensure the Integrity of the Criminal Justice System (2006).

Professor Taslitz has recently given numerous talks on evidentiary and criminal justice topics at such venues as Harvard, Oxford, and Duke universities, the University of North Carolina, Washington and Lee College of Law, and William and Mary College of Law. He has spoken on black protectionism and judicial confusion about the nature of the subconscious mind at the recent Annual Meeting of the Law and Society Association, on race and wrongful convictions at the 2006 Annual Meeting of the American Association of Law Schools, and on terrorism and time at the Criminal Procedure Forum.

Professor Taslitz is an active member of the American Bar Association’s Criminal Justice Section, having served as new Co-Director of the Division of Communications, a member of the Criminal Justice Standards Committee, Chair of the Criminal Justice periodical Editorial Board, a member of the Section Council, Co-Chair of the Committee on Race and Racism, and Chair of the Eyewitness Identification Subcommittee of the Committee on Innocence and Ensuring the Integrity of the Criminal Justice System. Professor Taslitz has also been a member of the Committee on Corrections and Sentencing, the Section Officers’ Conference/Center for Professional Responsibility Joint Committee on Ethics and Professionalism, the Advisory Committee on the State of Criminal Justice, and the Committee on Rules of Criminal Procedure and Evidence and has served as Section liason to an American Judicature Society planning committee for an action conference on wrongful convictions, the Innocence Committee Liason to the Committee on ABA Standards for the Prosecution Function: Investigative Standards for the Prosecutor, a CLE planning committee on wrongful convictions, and a temporary subcommittee on the impact of courtroom technology on criminal justice, as well as having Chaired the Publication Subcommittee and Co-Chaired the Color/Racial Profiling Subcommittee of the 1999 National Conference on the Impact of Race and Ethnicity on the Criminal Justice System sponsored by the ABA’s Council on Racial and Ethnic Justice.

Professor Taslitz has also served as the Co-Reporter for the Death Penalty Initiative of the Constitution Project and is a member of the American Law Institute, the Criminal Justice Issues Working Group of the American Constitution Society, the Civility Implementation Committee of the D.C. Bar, Fearless Eagle (devoted to helping high school students succeed), the Congress of Fellows of the Center for International Legal Studies, and a provisional member of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences. Professor Taslitz is a past Chair, Chair-Elect, and Secretary of both the Criminal Justice and Evidence Sections of the American Association of Law Schools, as well as being the former author of a regular internet column on evidence issues for the AALS and having served as a guardian ad litem for abused children via the Support Center for Child Advocates.

Professor Taslitz has served on numerous law school and university committees, including most recently as Chair of the Faculty Subcommittee of the Self-Study Committee; Co-Chair of the Law Journal Committee and Co-Faculty Advisor to the Law Journal; Chair of the Ad Hoc Committee on Curriculum Review; a member of the Judicial Clerkship Committee; a member of the Working Group on Promotions and Tenure of the Committee on Appointments, Promotion, and Tenure; and a member of the University Think Tank Committee. He is also the Faculty Advisor to the student branches of the American Constitution Society and the ACLU.

Professor Taslitz loves to teach, appreciates fine food, is a true science fiction and comic book fanatic, thrills to great movies, and owes much of the joy in his life to his heart-melting wife, Patty Sun, whose last name aptly captures her role in his life, and to his two beloved Norwegian Elkhounds, B’lanna (named after the half-Klingon engineer on Star Trek Voyager) and Odo (named after the shape-changer on Star Trek, Deep Space Nine). His door is always open.

New Book
Reconstructing the Fourth Amendment:
A History of Search and Seizure

Publications

Professional Contributions