David Alan 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 criminal law, criminal procedure, and evidence. His scholarship has addressed the law, sociology, and political science of policing; the relationship between criminal justice and democracy; the proper exercise and constraint of prosecutorial power; the interpretation and application of the Fourth Amendment; fairness and accuracy in criminal adjudication; the relationship between criminal justice and immigration laws; the history of the hearsay rule and its connection with American slavery; ideas about violence in criminal law; and the role of race, gender, and sexual orientation in law enforcement. He 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 an Assistant United States Attorney in Los Angeles.
Education
- BA, UC Berkeley, 1981
- JD, Harvard University, 1984
Related Organizations
Courses
- Comparative Evidence Law
- Criminal Justice and the Crisis of American Democracy
- Criminal Law
- Directed Research
- Discussion (1L): Abolish or Reform? Prisons, Police, and the Death Penalty
- Evidence
- Externship, Special Circumstances
- Legal Studies Workshop
- Policy Practicum: Creating a National Census of Women Imprisoned for Murdering their Abusers
- Policy Practicum: Regilla Project: Women Incarcerated for Killing their Abusers
- SPILS Masters Thesis
Faculty on Point | Prof. David Alan Sklansky on Better Forms of Accountability for Prosecutors
Policy Practicums
News
Trump faces obstacles in claiming selective prosecution in documents case, experts say
The Center Square
David Alan Sklansky, a Stanford University criminal law professor and former federal prosecutor, said it could be a long shot for Trump. "It's a high bar, and Trump doesn't appear to have any chance of meeting the requirements," Sklansky told The Center Square.
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