Prof. Eric M. Freedman

Eric M. Freedman is the Maurice A. Deane Distinguished Professor of Constitutional Law at Hofstra Law School. His career combines scholarship in constitutional law with public interest litigation dealing with the First Amendment and a variety of other civil liberties fields.

Professor Freedman is the author of a number of scholarly and popular articles on First Amendment law and history. He is a director of and counsel to the National Coalition Against Censorship, a former chair of the Communications Media Committee of the ACLU, and has served several terms on the Communications Law Committee of the New York City Bar Association.

Professor Freedman is the Reporter for the American Bar Association’s Guidelines for the Appointment and Performance of Defense Counsel in Death Penalty Cases (2d ed., 2003) and the author of HABEAS CORPUS: RETHINKING THE GREAT WRIT OF LIBERTY (NYU Press 2003).

A graduate of the Phillips Exeter Academy and Yale College, Professor Freedman earned a Master’s Degree in history from Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand while on a Fulbright Scholarship there. He received his law degree from Yale Law School, where he was an editor of the Yale Law Journal. He is an elected member of the American Law Institute and a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation.

Prior to coming to Hofstra, Professor Freedman clerked for Judge Irving R. Kaufman of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and practiced as a litigator at the firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison in New York and Washington.

• B.A., J.D., Yale University
• M.A., Victoria University of Wellington (New Zealand)