Law Professor Lara Bazelon

Lara Bazelon

Professor of Law, Barnett Chair in Trial Advocacy

Biography

Lara Bazelon is a Professor at the University of San Francisco School of Law where she directs the Criminal & Juvenile and Racial Justice Clinics and holds the Philip and Muriel Barnett Chair in Trial Advocacy.  Since 2022, she has served as the Law School’s Dean of Scholarship.  She is the author of the nonfictions books Rectify: The Power of Restorative Justice After Wrongful Conviction (Beacon Press 2018) and Ambitious Like a Mother (Little Brown 2022) as well as numerous essays, op-eds, and long-form journalism pieces.  Her work has been published in The New York Times, The Washington PostThe Atlantic Magazine, and New York Magazine, among other outlets.

Expertise

  • Wrongful convictions
  • Trial advocacy
  • Criminal procedure

Research Areas

  • Criminal law
  • Criminal procedure
  • Restorative justice
  • Wrongful convictions
  • Ethics

Appointments

  • Chair, SFDA Innocence Commission
  • USF School of Law Dean of Scholarship

Education

  • New York University, JD
  • Columbia University, BA

Prior Experience

  • Visiting Associate Clinical Professor, Loyola Law School
  • Director, Loyola Law School Project for the Innocent
  • Clinical Fellow, UC Hastings College of the Law
  • Deputy Federal Public Defender, Los Angeles
  • Law Clerk, Honorable Harry Pregerson

Awards & Distinctions

  • Davis Vanguard Justice Award - The award was given to the Racial Justice Clinic for our work with the district attorney's office exonerating the wrongfully convicted and resentencing the excessively sentenced (2021).
  • Senior Fellow, Schuster Institute for Ethics and Investigative Journalism (2016-2019).
  • Mesa Refuge Writer-in-Residence and Langeloth Fellow (June 2017).
  • MacDowell Writer-in-Residence (March-April 2016).
  • Black Women Lawyer’s Association of Los Angeles Community Service Award (2014) (accepted on behalf of the Loyola Law School Project for the Innocent for the exoneration of Kash Delano Register.
  • Aleph Institute Award of Distinction (2012).

Books

  • Systemic Racism: Defining Terms and Evaluating Evidence, ed. Trevor Shelley, Lexington Books, (Forthcoming)
  • "David Simon Made Baltimore Detectives Famous. Now Their Cases Are Falling Apart. Has reality caught up to the "Murder Police"?." In Evidence of Things Seen: True Crime in an Era of Reckoning (Ecco/HarperCollins), ed. Sarah Weinman. (Forthcoming)
  • Ambitious Like a Mother: Why Prioritizing Your Career is Good for Your Kids (Little, Brown Spark, April 2022)
  • Rectify: The Power of Restorative Justice After Wrongful Conviction (Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon Press, October 2018)

Law Review and Journal Articles

  • "Providing Assistance and Promoting Justice," 17 California Legal History 27 (2022)
  • "History in the Making: The University of San Francisco Racial Justice Clinic," 17 California Legal History Journal 27 (2022).
  • “David Simon Made Baltimore Detectives Famous. Now Their Cases Are Falling Apart. Has Reality Caught Up to the "Murder Police"?,” New York Magazine (2022).
  • “Restorative Justice From Prosecutors' Perspective,” Fordham Law Review (2020).
  • “Victims' Rights from a Restorative Perspective,” 17 Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law (forthcoming 2020). (co-authored with Bruce Green) Victims' Rights from a Restorative Perspective SSRN
  • “Ending Innocence Denying,” 47 Hofstra Law Review 393 (2018). Ending Innocence Denying SSRN
  • “The Long Goodbye: After the Innocence Movement, Does the Attorney Client Relationship Ever End?,” 106 Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology 681 (2017). SSRN
  • “For Shame: The Public Humiliation of Prosecutors by Judges to Correct Wrongful Convictions,” 29 Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics 305 (2016).
  • “Hard Lessons: The Role of Law School Clinics in Addressing Prosecutorial Misconduct,” 16 Berkeley Journal of Criminal Law 388 (2011).
  • “Putting the Mice in Charge of the Cheese: Why Federal Judges Cannot Always Be Trusted To Police Themselves and What Congress Can Do About It,” 97 Kentucky Law Journal 439 (2009).
  • “Exploding the Superpredator Myth: Why Infancy is the Best Defense in the Modern Juvenile Court,” 75 NYU Law Review 159 (2000). (Recipient, Paul D. Kaufman Memorial Award for best student Note)