The University of Texas at Austin   School of Law

Education

• JD Harvard
• BA Wesleyan University

Areas of Specialty

• Capital Punishment
• Constitutional Law

Professor Steiker joined the faculty in 1990 after serving as a law clerk to Justice Thurgood Marshall of the United States Supreme Court. He teaches constitutional law, criminal law, and death penalty law, and is Co-Director of the law school's Capital Punishment Center. He was a visiting professor at the Harvard Law School and has written extensively on constitutional law, federal habeas corpus, and the death penalty. Some of his recent publications include: A Tale of Two Nations: Implementation of the Death Penalty in "Executing" Versus "Symbolic" States in the United States, (Texas Law Review 2006) (with Carol Steiker); The Seduction of Innocence: The Attraction and Limitations of the Focus on Innocence in Capital Punishment Law and Advocacy (Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology 2005) (with Carol Steiker); Habeas Exceptionalism, (Texas Law Review, 2000); Restructuring Post-Conviction Review of Federal Claims Raised by State Prisoners: Confronting the New Face of Excessive Proceduralism, (Chicago Legal Forum, 1998); The Limits of Legal Language: Decisionmaking in Capital Cases (Michigan Law Review, 1996); and Sober Second Thoughts: Reflections on Two Decades of Constitutional Regulation of Capital Punishment, (Harvard Law Review, 1995) (with Carol Steiker).

Recent Publications

• The American Death Penalty: Constitutional Regulation as the Distinctive Feature of American Exceptionalism [Symposium: Future of the Death Penalty in America], 67 University of Miami Law Review 329 (2013).
• Entrenchment and/or Destabilization? Reflections on (Another) Two Decades of Constitutional Regulation of Capital Punishment, 30 Law and Inequality 211 (2012) (with Carol Steiker).
• Broken and Beyond Repair: The American Death Penalty and the Insuperable Obstacles to Reform, in Oxford Handbook of Sentencing and Corrections, 707 (Joan Petersilia & Kevin Reitz, eds., Oxford University Press, 2012) (with Carol Steiker).

Full list of publications…

Recent Activities

• Quote

  July 8, 2007

  New York Times

  On July 8th, was quoted in the New York Times about President Bush's clemency policy during his governorship in Texas.

• Lecture

  April 26, 2007

  Oxford University

  On April 26th, delivered a lecture at Oxford University, "The American Death Penalty: Federal Constitutional Regulation and the Prospects for Judicial Abolition."

• Quote

  April 26, 2007

  Various Newspapers

  On April 26th, was quoted in the Houston Chronicle, Dallas Morning News, Austin-American Statesman, and San Antonio Express News about the Capital Punishment Clinic's victories in three cases in the U.S. Supreme Court, Smith v. Texas, Abdul-Kabir v. Quarterman, and Brewer v. Quarterman.

Full activities list…