George Fisher

- Judge John Crown Professor of Law
- Faculty Co-Director, Criminal Prosecution Clinic
- Room N259, Neukom Building
Expertise
- Clinical Education
- Constitutional Criminal Procedure
- Criminal Law
- Criminal Procedure
- Criminal Prosecution
- Criminology/Criminal Law Policymaking
- Drug Policy
- Evidence
- Legal History
- Plea Bargaining & Juries
- Prosecutorial Ethics
- Trial Advocacy & Skills Training
Biography
A former Massachusetts assistant attorney general and assistant district attorney, George Fisher is one of the nation’s top scholars of criminal law and evidence. In his scholarship he explores, through meticulous archival research, the history of criminal law and criminal institutions from prisons to juries, from plea bargaining to the regulation of alcohol and drugs. His publications include an acclaimed casebook on evidence and a history of plea bargaining in America. Professor Fisher is the faculty co-director of the Criminal Prosecution Clinic at the law school and a four-time winner of the John Bingham Hurlbut Award for Excellence in Teaching at Stanford Law School.
Before joining the Stanford Law School faculty in 1995, he was a clinical professor at Boston College Law School, an assistant attorney general in the Civil Rights Division of the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office, and an assistant district attorney for Middlesex County, Massachusetts. Early in his career Professor Fisher clerked for Judge Stephen G. Breyer (BA ’59) of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.
Education
- AB Harvard University 1982
- JD Harvard Law School 1986
Related Organizations
Courses
- Criminal Prosecution Clinic: Clinical Coursework
- Criminal Prosecution Clinic: Clinical Methods
- Criminal Prosecution Clinic: Clinical Practice
- Directed Professional Writing
- Directed Research
- Discussion (1L): Criminal Legal Histories
- Evidence
- Externship, Special Circumstances
- SPILS Masters Thesis
- TGR: Dissertation
Affiliations & Honors
- Member, Board of Directors, Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights
- Brought the (losing) case, FAIR v. Rumsfeld, 126 S. Ct. 1297 (2006)
- Recipient, John Bingham Hurlbut Award for Excellence in Teaching, Stanford, 1999, 2003

Criminal Prosecution Clinic
Through Stanford’s Criminal Prosecution Clinic, students shape the outcome of felony prosecutions in conjunction with the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office.
Guided by Professor George Fisher, six students learn basic case preparation and courtroom skills on campus in a trial advocacy class. Then they spend Thursdays and Fridays working on their cases with guidance from Professor Fisher and prosecutors at the DA’s office. Students confront cases with strategic and logistical challenges and grapple with the complex ethical issues that define prosecutors’ fundamental charge to seek justice.
News
Thieves are targeting power tools worth up to $50,000 in latest Bay Area crime wave
San Francisco Chronicle
Although the sudden intensification of these power tool capers has bedeviled law enforcement, criminologists point to several converging factors. “You need a few ingredients to create a crime wave, and one is opportunity, and one is incentive,” said Stanford University law Professor George Fisher. Incentives — namely, need and desire…
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