Criminal Law and Administration

Criminal law at NYU is a rich discipline that begins with the first-year course in Criminal Law, which covers general principles of criminal responsibility. Top scholars who teach first-year Criminal Law include Rachel Barkow, Randy Hertz, Sarah Seo, Avani Mehta Sood, and Andrew Weissmann.

Second-year students can take courses in evidence or criminal procedure. Most law schools have only one course in criminal procedure—at NYU, students can choose from four. Upper-level courses in substantive and procedural criminal law include Business Crime, Complex Federal Investigations Seminar, America’s Penal State Seminar, Current Topics in Criminal Justice Reform Seminar, and Emerging Issues in Federal Criminal Law Seminar. And those interested in getting practical, hands-on training can take clinics such as Criminal Defense and Reentry Clinic, Civil Rights in the Criminal Legal System Clinic, Criminal Appellate Defender Clinic, Juvenile Defender Clinic, and multiple clinical externships in local prosecution offices. Students may develop their foundational lawyering skills in simulation courses in the area of criminal practice, including Criminal Procedure: Arraignment to Postconviction, Trial Advocacy Simulation, and AI and the Criminal Legal System.

Our faculty are leaders in their fields, from capital punishment to the administration of law. They explore critical issues in meting out justice through centers such as the Peter L. Zimroth Center on the Administration of Criminal Law, the Reiss Center on Law and Security, and the Brennan Center for Justice.

Required Course Learning Outcomes

Criminal Law (LAW-LW.11147)

Students in this course will:

• Learn how to closely read statutory texts and specifically how to analyze the elements of a criminal statute.
• Further hone their skills at common law reasoning and the distinguishing of cases.
• Familiarize themselves with the rules and principles that govern society's efforts to apportion blame and responsibility as part of its criminal laws.
• Understand the relationship between criminal punishment and the concepts of fault, wrongdoing, proportionality, and accountability.
• Master the analytical elements to assign blame and assess justifications and excuses.
• Gain insight into the potential and limits of legal processes in general, and the criminal law in particular, to serve as an instrument of social control.

Multiple-Section Course Learning Outcomes

Criminal Procedure, 4th and 5th Amendments (LAW.LW.10395)

At the conclusion of this course, you should be able to:

1. Understand and critically evaluate various dimensions of Fourth Amendment, Fifth Amendment, Due Process, and Sixth Amendment jurisprudence;
2. Apply those bodies of doctrine to a set of facts from both a prosecutor’s and defense attorney’s standpoint in an organized and persuasive way;
3. Articulate well-reasoned predictions as to how the Supreme Court would resolve legal disputes that implicate the preceding doctrines; and
4. Identify and understand how race and other demographic characteristics intersect with and are shaped by constitutional criminal procedure.

Criminal Procedure: Arraignment to Postconviction (LAW.LW.10675)

Students will learn the constitutional doctrines that govern each of the stages of a criminal case, starting with arraignment and concluding with state postconviction procedures and federal habeas corpus. The topics covered in the course include: appointment of counsel, pretrial release/detention and bail; charging; diversion; grand jury; discovery; pretrial motions; plea bargaining; suppression hearings (although the course covers these only lightly because there is a separate course that students can take on 4th and 5th Amendments); trial; sentencing; appeal; and state and federal postconviction. Simulation exercises are used at various points in the course to elucidate the applicable legal doctrines and provide opportunities for students to deal with legal, factual, strategic, and ethical issues in role as prosecutors and defenders.