Criminal Law Scholarship

Hadar Aviram Honored with National Criminology Book Award 

The American Society of Criminology has recognized UC Law San Francisco Professor Hadar Aviram with the Michael J. Hindelang Outstanding Book Award for her groundbreaking work, Fester: Carceral Permeability and California’s COVID-19 Correctional Disaster, co-authored with Chad Goerzen (University of California Press, 2024).

Fester examines the consequences of California’s handling of COVID-19 inside its prisons. By blending narrative testimony with rigorous quantitative data analysis, courtroom observations, and policy analysis, Aviram and Goerzen describe the human cost of a public health emergency.

Research Challenges Assumptions About Widely-Used Gun Law

Professor Jonathan Abel examined 27,000 California felon-in-possession cases to uncover patterns behind one of the nation’s most debated gun laws. His research highlights differences in how the law is applied to people with violent versus nonviolent felony convictions and across racial groups. In a Q&A, Abel explains why data-driven evidence is essential for informed discussions about gun policy and public safety. 

New Faculty

Kate Weisburd joins our faculty as professor of law from George Washington University, where students voted her professor of the year in 2023 and 2024. Weisburd’s widely published research has appeared in the Virginia, California, and UCLA law reviews, and has won multiple peer-conferred awards.   

Prithika Balakrishnan joins our faculty as associate professor of law and was previously the C. Keith Wingate Visiting Professor at UC Law San Francisco. She has been a federal public defender, union organizer, and Peace Corps volunteer. Balakrishnan’s first article just appeared in the UCLA Law Review.  

Benjamin A. Barsky joins us as associate professor of law from Harvard University, where he was an annual fellow at the Harvard Law School Project on Disability, and an initiative fellow at the Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Ethics. Barsky’s research focuses on the public health effects of criminal law enforcement, and his articles have appeared in the Michigan Law Review, Washington Law Review, and New England Journal of Medicine. 

Professors’ Arguments Cited in SCOTUS Expert Testimony Case

Three UC Law SF professors played an important role in Diaz v. United States, a U.S. Supreme Court case testing the limits of expert testimony in criminal trials.

The case considered whether experts can opine on a defendant’s likely mental state. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson penned a concurring opinion, citing arguments co-written by UC Law SF’s Professor Emily Murphy and Professor of Practice, Matt Coles, along with Professor Teneille Brown, of the University of Utah. 

Murphy and Coles filed an amicus brief in the case on behalf of more than 20 evidence law professors, including UC Law SF Chancellor & Dean David Faigman, arguing that experts can offer important “framework” evidence on the likelihood of a fact being true.