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David A. Sklansky

David A. A Sklansky
David A. Sklansky
  • Stanley Morrison Professor of Law
  • Faculty Co-Director, Stanford Criminal Justice Center

sklansky@stanford.edu

Assistant(s):
  • Room N257, Neukom Building

Download Curriculum Vitae

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

Faculty on Point | Prof. David Alan Sklansky on Better Forms of Accountability for Prosecutors

Faculty on Point | Professor David Alan Sklansky on Better Forms of Accountability for Prosecutors
Play VideoFaculty on Point | Professor David Alan Sklansky on Better Forms of Accountability for Prosecutors

Policy Practicums

News

Newsom says Trump pardons have cost taxpayers $2B as war over ‘fraud’ escalates

San Francisco Chronicle

But “lawsuits can be difficult to pursue,” David Sklansky, a Stanford professor of criminal law, told the Chronicle, “and the litigation process can be prolonged and expensive.”

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