Scholar In Residence
The Center regularly selects a scholar-in-residence who is a criminal law expert from legal practice, law enforcement, journalism, or academia. During their residency, these scholars-in-residence work with the Center and produce original scholarship on topics of interest to the Center.
The Center's scholar-in-residence for academic year 2009-2010 is Professor Erin Murphy. Professor Murphy is Assistant Professor of Law at Berkeley Law School and will be a Visiting Professor at New York University School of Law in the fall semester of 2009. Erin Murphy joined the faculty at Berkeley from the Public Defender Service (PDS) for the District of Columbia, where she spent three years in the trial division and two years in the appellate division. While at PDS, Murphy represented clients in felony and misdemeanor cases in jury and bench trials, and argued before the D.C. Court of Appeals. She also led a widely watched constitutional challenge to the District of Columbia's firearms laws, and acquired particular expertise in the scientific and legal issues surrounding the admissibility of various types of forensic evidence. Murphy is a graduate of the Harvard Law School, where she served as a Notes Editor for the Harvard Law Review and an oralist for the champion team in the Ames Moot Court competition. She clerked for Judge Merrick B. Garland of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
Professor Murphy's research focuses on questions related to new technologies and the relationship between the individual and the state in the criminal justice context. Her particular interests include forensic DNA typing, biometric scanning, electronic tracking and functional MRI imaging. The Duke Law Journal published her recent article, "Paradigms of Restraint," which won the AALS Criminal Justice Section award for best paper by a junior scholar. Other representative works include "The New Forensics: Criminal Justice, False Certainty and the Second Generation of Scientific Evidence" in the California Law Journal and "Inferences, Arguments, and Second Generation Forensic Evidence" in the Hastings Law Journal. Murphy teaches courses related to criminal law, criminal procedure and evidence.