Draft:Albert Alschuler

Alschuler was born in Aurora, Illinois on September 24, 1940. His father, Sam Alschuler, was an Aurora lawyer and his mother, Winifred King Alschuler, a teacher and homemaker.{{Cite web|url=https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2006-07-14-0607140259-story.html|title=Sam Alschuler|website=Chicago Tribune|date=14 July 2006 }} He attended public schools in Aurora and graduated from Harvard College in 1962. In 1965, he graduated from the Harvard Law School where he was an officer of the Harvard Law Review.{{Cite web|url=https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/alschuler-albert-w-1940|title=Alschuler, Albert W. 1940– |website=www.encyclopedia.com}}

Alschuler was a law clerk to Illinois Supreme Court Justice Walter V. Schaefer and a special assistant to Fred M. Vinson Jr., United States Assistant Attorney General in Charge of the United States Department of Justice Criminal Division. He began his academic career in 1966 as an assistant professor at The University of Texas School of Law, and was promoted to full professor in 1969. From 1976 through 1984, he was a professor at the University of Colorado Law School. He taught briefly at the University of Pennsylvania before joining the University of Chicago Law School faculty in 1985. At Chicago, he was promoted to Wilson-Dickinson Professor in 1988 and to Julius Kreeger Professor in 2002. After taking emeritus status at Chicago in 2006, he became a professor of law at Northwestern University for five years and then retired.{{Cite web|url=https://www.law.northwestern.edu/about/news/newsdisplay.cfm?ID=407|title=Dean Welcomes Students Back for Spring Term|website=Northwestern Law}}

Alschuler's interviews with lawyers and judges in ten American cities in the 1960s led to his studies of the prosecutor's,{{Cite journal|url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/1598832|title=The Prosecutor's Role in Plea Bargaining|author=Alschuler, Albert W.|year=1968|journal=The University of Chicago Law Review|volume=36|issue=1|pages=50–112|doi=10.2307/1598832|jstor=1598832 }} defense attorney's,{{Cite journal|url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/795498|title=The Defense Attorney's Role in Plea Bargaining|author=Alschuler, Albert W.|year=1975|journal=The Yale Law Journal|volume=84|issue=6|pages=1179–1314|doi=10.2307/795498|jstor=795498 }} and trial judge's{{Cite journal|url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/1121673|title=The Trial Judge's Role in Plea Bargaining, Part I|author=Alschuler, Albert W.|year=1976|journal=Columbia Law Review|volume=76|issue=7|pages=1059–1154|doi=10.2307/1121673|jstor=1121673 }} roles in plea bargaining. Returning to the topic fifty years after his first study, he described plea bargaining as a nearly perfect device for convicting the innocent{{cite web|url= https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2052&context=public_law_and_legal_theory |title= A Nearly Perfect System for Convicting the Innocent}} and as a major cause of mass incarceration.{{Cite web|url=https://annualsurveyofamericanlaw.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/76.2-Alschuler.pdf|title=Plea Bargaining and Mass Incarceration }}

Alschuler has been a critic of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines.{{Cite journal|url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/1599992|title=The Failure of Sentencing Guidelines: A Plea for Less Aggregation|author=Alschuler, Albert W.|year=1991|journal=The University of Chicago Law Review|volume=58|issue=3|pages=901–951|doi=10.2307/1599992|jstor=1599992 }} He later contended that, from any coherent normative perspective, these guidelines increased sentence disparity.{{Cite web|url=http://www.stanfordlawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2010/04/Alschuler.pdf|title=Disparity: The Normative and Empirical Failure of the Federal Guidelines }} He described the rule barring the use of illegally obtained evidence as one of the law's success stories{{cite web|url=https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5424&context=uclrev |title= Studying the Exclusionary Rule: An Empirical Classic}} but called the Supreme Court's ruling in Miranda v. Arizona a failure.{{Cite web|url=https://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=2969143|title=Miranda's Fourfold Failure|first=Albert W.|last=Alschuler|date=May 11, 2017|ssrn=2969143 |via=papers.ssrn.com}} In a paper, he advocated limiting corporate criminal liability, comparing it to the practice of punishing inanimate objects.{{Cite journal|url=https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/journal_articles/1008|title=Two Ways to Think about the Punishment of Corporations|first=Albert|last=Alschuler|date=January 1, 2009|journal=American Criminal Law Review|volume=46|pages=1359}}

In Rediscovering Blackstone, Alschuler described the impact of Sir William Blackstone's work on American law and defended Blackstone's jurisprudence against modern critics.{{Cite journal|url=https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/journal_articles/1004|title=Rediscovering Blackstone|first=Albert|last=Alschuler|date=January 1, 1996|journal=University of Pennsylvania Law Review|volume=145|issue=1 |pages=1–55|doi=10.2307/3312712 |jstor=3312712 }} In Law Without Values: The Life, Work, and Legacy of Justice Holmes, he examined how Holmes' moral skepticism dominated his opinions and scholarly writings.{{cite journal|url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/review-of-politics/article/abs/life-as-war-albert-w-alschuler-law-without-values-the-life-work-and-legacy-of-justice-holmes-chicago-university-of-chicago-press-2000-pp-x-325-3000/AE828FA1A445D50CE162F38E85C2549D|title=Life As War - Albert W. Alschuler: Law without Values: The Life, Work, and Legacy of Justice Holmes. – The Review of Politics|journal=The Review of Politics |volume=63 |issue=4 |pages=842–844 |doi=10.1017/S0034670500032307 |last1=Rosenberg |first1=Norman L. |s2cid=145530833 }} Judge Morris B. Hoffman commended this study as "stunningly new and original."{{Cite journal|url=https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?p=AONE&sw=w&issn=00389765&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA83762769&sid=googleScholar&linkaccess=abs|title=Law Without Values: The Life, Work, and Legacy of Justice Holmes|first=Morris B.|last=Hoffman|date=December 1, 2001|journal=Stanford Law Review|volume=54|issue=3|pages=597–626|doi=10.2307/1229467 |jstor=1229467 |via=go.gale.com}}

• 1975-1976 – Visiting Fellow, National Institute of Justice
• 1984 – Visiting Scholar, American Bar Foundation
• 1997 – Sutherland Prize, American Society for Legal History{{Cite web|url=https://aslh.net/award/sutherland-prize/|title=Sutherland Prize | American Society for Legal History|date=November 27, 2018}}
• 1997 – Guggenheim Fellowship, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation{{Cite web|url=https://www.law.nyu.edu/news/SPRING_2009_VISITORS|title=Law School welcomes Spring 2009 visitors | NYU School of Law|website=www.law.nyu.edu}}
• 2000 – Exemplary Legal Writing Award, Green Bag Board of Advisors{{Cite web|url=http://www.greenbag.org/green_bag_press/almanacs/almanacs.html|title=Almanac & Reader|website=www.greenbag.org}}{{Dead link|date=May 2025 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}

• The Privilege against Self-Incrimination: Its Origins and Development (1997) {{ISBN|978-0226326603}} (with R. H. Helmholz, Charles Gray, John H. Langbein, Eben Moglen & Henry Smith)
• Law Without Values: The Life, Work, and Legacy of Justice Holmes (2000) {{ISBN|978-0226015200}}

• Alschuler, A. W. (1968). "The prosecutor's role in plea bargaining". The University of Chicago Law Review, 36, 50–112.
• Alschuler, A. W. (1975). "The defense attorney's role in plea bargaining". The Yale Law Journal, 84, 1179–1314.
• Alschuler, A.W. (1976). "The trial judge's role in plea bargaining". Columbia Law Review, 76, 1059–1154.
• Alschuler, A. W. (1979). "Plea bargaining and its history". Columbia Law Review, 79, 1–43.
• Alschuler, A. W. (1983). "Implementing the criminal defendant's right to trial: Alternatives to the plea bargaining system". The University of Chicago Law Review, 50, 931–1050.
• Alschuler, A. W., & Deiss, A. G. (1994). "A brief history of the criminal jury in the United States". The University of Chicago Law Review, 61, 867–928.
• Alschuler, A. W. (2017). "Miranda's fourfold failure". Boston University Law Review, 97, 849–891.
• Alschuler, A. W. (2021). "Plea bargaining and mass incarceration". New York University Annual Survey of American Law, 76, 205–234.

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Category:Harvard College alumni

Category:Harvard Law School alumni

Category:University of Texas School of Law faculty

Category:University of Colorado Law School faculty

Category:University of Pennsylvania Law School faculty

Category:University of Chicago Law School faculty

Category:1940 births

Category:Living people}}

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