Erin Murphy will join the Law School faculty as a tenured professor in the fall. Currently an assistant professor at the University of California at Berkeley Law School, she was a visiting professor at NYU Law last fall and at Harvard Law School in the spring.
Murphy has taught courses in criminal law, criminal procedure, and evidence, and her research focuses on questions related to new technologies, privacy, and the use of state power in the criminal justice system. NYU Law Dean Richard Revesz said, "Her analytically rich and creative scholarship reflects her significant scientific expertise in forensic techniques, such as DNA typing, data mining, biometrics, and electronic tracking, and her empirical work is grounded in an impressive mastery of legal doctrine and criminal law practice." Her article, "Paradigms of Restraint," published in the Duke Law Journal in 2008, won the AALS Criminal Justice Section award for best paper by a junior scholar. A second article published that year by the Emory Law Journal, "The Art in the Science of DNA: A Layperson's Guide to the Subjectivity Inherent in Forensic DNA Typing," was cited in 2009 by the Supreme Court in District Attorneys. v. Osborne.
After clerking for the Honorable Merrick B. Garland on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, Murphy served for five years as a trial and appellate attorney at Public Defender's Service in Washington, D.C., where she represented clients in felony and misdemeanor cases in jury and bench trials. In 2005 she joined the faculty at Berkeley, where she founded the Junior Working Ideas Group and played an active institutional role.
Murphy received her A.B. in comparative literature magna cum laude from Dartmouth College in 1995, and her J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1999, also magna cum laude. She was a notes editor for the Harvard Law Review, received a Heyman Fellowship for Government Service, and was an oralist for the champion team in the Ames Moot Court competition.
Published June 17, 2010