Steven A. Drizin

William M. Trumbull Clinical Professor of Law
Co-Director, Center on Wrongful Convictions

Biography

Steven Drizin is a Clinical Professor of Law at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law where he has been on the faculty since 1991. He served as the Legal Director of the Clinic's renowned Center on Wrongful Convictions from March 2005 to September 2013. At the Center, Professor Drizin's research interests involve the study of false confessions and his policy work focuses on supporting efforts around the country to require law enforcement agencies to electronically record custodial interrogations. Drizin co-founded the Center on Wrongful Convictions of Youth (CWCY) in 2008, the first innocence organization to focus on representing defendants who were only teenagers when they were wrongfully convicted. Drizin and former student Laura Nirider, who co-directs the CWC, represent Brendan Dassey, a central figure in Netflix's smash docuseries Making a Murderer.

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Areas of Expertise

  • Clinical Teaching
  • Juvenile Justice
  • Criminal Law
  • Criminal Procedure
  • Wrongful Convictions

Courses

Selected Publications

  • True Stories of False Confessions (Northwestern University Press 2009) (with Rob Warden ).
  • The Problem of False Confessions in the Post DNA World, 82 North Carolina Law Review 891-1007 (2004) (with Richard A. Leo).
  • Are Juvenile Courts A Breeding Ground for Wrongful Convictions?, 34 Northern Kentucky Law Review 257-322 (2007) (with Greg Luloff ).
  • Tales From the Juvenile Confession Front: A Guide to How Standard Police Interrogation Tactics Can Produce Coerced and False Confessions From Juvenile Suspects, in Interrogations, Confessions, and Entrapment, edited by G. Daniel Lassiter (Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers 2004) (with Beth A. Colgan).
  • Police-Induced Confessions, Risk Factors, and Recommendations: Looking Ahead , 34 Law And Human Behavior 49-52 (2010) (with Saul M. Kassin, Thomas Grisso, Gisli H. Gudjonsson, Richard A. Leo, and Allison D. Redlich).
  • "Owing to the Extreme Youth of the Accused": The Changing Legal Response to Juvenile Homicide, 92 Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology 641-705 (2002) (with David S. Tanenhaus).

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Education

  • BA, Haverford College
  • JD, Northwestern University

Prior Appointments

  • Clinical Professor of Law, Northwestern University School of Law
  • Assistant Dean, Bluhm Legal Clinic, Northwestern University School of Law
  • Associate Director, Bluhm Legal Clinic, Northwestern University School of Law
  • Director, Center on Wrongful Convictions, Northwestern University School of Law
  • Legal Director, Center on Wrongful Convictions, Northwestern University School of Law
  • Supervising Attorney, Children and Family Justice Center, Northwestern University School of Law

Recent Consulting Activities

  • Expert Witness, Office of the Public Defender Service in Washington, D.C.

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