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William Stuntz

  • Andrew Manuel Crespo

    Andrew Manuel Crespo: Practice Meets Theory

    January 29, 2019

    As staff attorney with the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia for more than three years, Assistant Professor Andrew Manuel Crespo '08 represented adults and juveniles charged with felonies ranging from armed robberies to homicides. Passionate about the work, he had no plans to become an academic. But early in his career, then-Dean Martha Minow engaged him in a life-changing conversation.

  • Invincible Ignorance

    January 19, 2018

    In 1997, The Scrapbook saw a funny New York Times headline: “Crime Keeps on Falling, but Prisons Keep on Filling.” Astonishingly, we noted, “the possibility that longer sentences and less parole might be playing a large part in that falling crime rate” had failed to penetrate the furrowed brows at the Times. We mocked them and were apparently ignored, because a year later they were back with more of the same, a story that captured the essence of modern liberal thought on crime...This reflection led us back to a terrific cover story in The Weekly Standard from February 23, 2009, by the late William Stuntz: “Law and Disorder: The case for a police surge.” Stuntz was a professor at Harvard Law School and the author of groundbreaking work on crime policy. In that essay he contended that just as a large surge of ground forces had quelled the insurgency in Iraq, so increases in police numbers tend over time to decrease violent crime.

  • John Paul Stevens turns his attention to William Stuntz’s ‘The Collapse of American Criminal Justice’

    October 21, 2011

    In a comprehensive review published Oct. 20 by the New York Review of Books, retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens provides thoughtful analysis of the recently published book "The Collapse of American Criminal Justice," by the late Harvard Law School Professor William J. Stuntz.

  • Summer 2011 (Tribute)

    William Stuntz: 1958-2011

    July 1, 2011

    Since William Stuntz’s death on March 15 at age 52, the renowned scholar of criminal justice at Harvard Law School and evangelical Christian has been eulogized in many ways, from the service at Park Street Church, to quotations in numerous obituaries, to the postings from his former students on an HLS journal site, to the appreciation on the New York Times editorial page. Below are excerpts from some of those remembrances.

  • William J. Stuntz

    NYT: An editorial appreciation of William Stuntz, 1958-2011

    March 25, 2011

    The New York Times published an editorial appreciation of the late William J. Stuntz of the Harvard Law School faculty, on March 23.

  • Professor William J. Stuntz

    William Stuntz [1958-2011]: An examined life of thoughtfulness and grace

    March 15, 2011

    William Stuntz, a renowned scholar of criminal justice at Harvard Law School,  an evangelical Christian and a teacher much beloved by students and colleagues, died March 15 after a long battle with cancer.

  • William J. Stuntz

    From the Weekly Standard: A gentleman-scholar at Harvard Law School

    April 15, 2010

    Legal academia is not famous for collective displays of appreciation, and even less so for the humility of its members. So the celebration of the work of William Stuntz held at Harvard Law School on March 26 and 27 was doubly extraordinary.

  • William J. Stuntz

    Offering a window on a world many never see

    February 24, 2009

    William Stuntz, the Henry J. Friendly Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, is an expert on criminal law and procedure and crime policy. He has co-written a casebook on criminal procedure and published numerous articles on all aspects of the criminal justice system, in law reviews, journals, and periodicals.

  • Hearsay: Faculty Short Takes Summer 2008

    July 1, 2008

    The Laws in Wartime Professor Jack Goldsmith
    Slate Magazine, April 2
    “We are surprisingly close to putting policy issues in the war on terrorism on…

  • Elizabeth Warren

    Stuntz and Warren elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences

    April 29, 2008

    Harvard Law School Professors William J. Stuntz and Elizabeth Warren are amongst the new class of members elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the nation's oldest and most prestigious scholarly societies. Members are chosen on the basis of "preeminent contributions to their disciplines and to society at large."

  • William J. Stuntz

    Professor William J. Stuntz: Four things the party loyalists won’t want to hear

    February 12, 2008

    The following article, The inconvenient truths of 2008, written by Harvard Law School Professor William J. Stuntz, was published in The Weekly Standard on February 18, 2008.

  • William J. Stuntz

    Professor Stuntz appointed Henry J. Friendly Professor of Law

    February 9, 2007

    Professor William Stuntz formally accepted the Henry J. Friendly Professor of Law chair on February 6. After an introduction by Dean Elena Kagan '86, Stuntz marked the occasion with a lecture entitled "Fighting Wars and Fighting Crime."

  • William J. Stuntz

    Is the case for intelligent design designed intelligently?

    April 23, 2006

    Several school boards have recently mandated that science curricula include the teaching of intelligent design--the theory that all advanced life forms are so complex that they must have been designed by an intelligent force.

  • William J. Stuntz

    Stuntz says Bush ‘pulled a Truman’ by selecting Miers

    October 5, 2005

    The following essay, The Truman Show: In choosing Miers, Bush pulled a Truman, by Professor William Stuntz originally appeared in The New Republic Online on October 4, 2005: What kind of president picks both John Roberts and Harriet Miers? They look like the ultimate odd couple. Roberts is not a Bush crony, he has a résumé to die for, and everyone who knows him says he's unbelievably smart. Miers is more than a crony but certainly not less.

  • William J. Stuntz

    Op-ed by Professor William Stuntz: The Anti-Theorists

    September 8, 2005

    George W. Bush has lost his favorite Supreme Court Justice. No, Antonin Scalia has not quietly resigned. (Does Scalia quietly do anything?) And yes, Bush does like to say that Scalia is his favorite Justice. But I have a sneaking suspicion his heart beats faster for William Rehnquist.

  • Gavel

    Aftermath

    July 1, 2005

    On Jan. 12, 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the strict and sometimes unforgiving sentencing guidelines that have tied the hands of federal judges for nearly 20 years would no longer bind them.

  • Hearsay: Excerpts from faculty op-eds Fall 2004

    September 1, 2004

    “If the pattern holds, then the record industry’s response to file sharing–trying to block the technology altogether–would generate the worst of all possible results. To…

  • Stuntz Brings Criminal Justice Focus to HLS

    July 18, 2000

    In what Dean Robert Clark '72 called a "stunning addition" to the criminal law faculty, University of Virginia Law School Professor William Stuntz will move north to Harvard in July.