David A. Sklansky
- Stanley Morrison Professor of Law
- Faculty Co-Director, Stanford Criminal Justice Center
- Room N257, Neukom Building
Expertise
- Constitutional Criminal Procedure
- Criminal Law
- Evidence
- Plea Bargaining & Juries
- Prosecutorial Ethics
- Sentencing & Corrections
Biography
David Sklansky teaches and writes about policing, prosecution, criminal law and the law of evidence. His newest book, “Criminal Justice in Divided America: Police, Punishment, and the Future of Our Democracy,” was published in 2025 by Harvard University Press. Sklansky is faculty co-director of the Stanford Criminal Justice Center, a faculty affiliate of Stanford’s Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity, and a member of the American Law Institute. In 2017 he received the law school’s John Bingham Hurlbut Award for Excellence in Teaching.
Before joining the faculty of Stanford Law School in 2014, Sklansky taught at U.C. Berkeley and UCLA. He won campus-wide teaching awards at both those institutions. Earlier he practiced labor law in Washington D.C. and served as a federal prosecutor in Los Angeles.
Education
- BA, UC Berkeley, 1981
- JD, Harvard University, 1984
Related Organizations
Courses
- Criminal Law
- Criminal Procedure: Adjudication
- Directed Professional Writing
- Directed Research
- Discussion (1L): Abolish or Reform? Prisons, Police, and the Death Penalty
- Discussion (1L): The Trump Prosecutions: Law, Politics, and Polarization
- Discussion (1L): What is the Rule of Law?
- Evidence
- Externship, Special Circumstances
- Homicide Law and Gender Based Violence
- Legal Studies Workshop
- Police and Prisons: German and American Approaches to Reform and Abolition
- Policy Practicum: Fair Compensation of Prison Labor in the U.S.
- Policy Practicum: Regilla Project: Women Incarcerated for Killing their Abusers
- S-Term: Comparative German-American Criminal Law
- SPILS Masters Thesis
Faculty on Point | Prof. David Alan Sklansky on Better Forms of Accountability for Prosecutors
Policy Practicums
News
How has Trump’s second term transformed the Justice Department?
Al Jazeera
“The overriding story is the effort to turn the Justice Department into a political tool and make it an instrument for pursuing the president’s political enemies,” said David Sklansky, a professor at Stanford Law School. But Sklansky, the Stanford Law professor, noted that Nixon tended to operate through back channels.…
Read More : How has Trump’s second term transformed the Justice Department?