Debate: Abolishing the Death Penalty
Virginia Student Chapter
Virtual
Charlottesville, VA 22903
Additional Speakers: Jennifer Givens
Additional Speakers: Jennifer Givens
Former Adjunct Professor of Law; former Special Counsel to the President; former federal prosecutor, Georgetown Law (ret.)
Bill Otis is a former Adjunct Professor of Law at Georgetown University, a one-time federal prosecutor, and a former Special White House Counsel for President George H. W. Bush. After graduating from Stanford Law School, he started his career in the Criminal Division of the Justice Department, then became chief of appeals for the US Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Virginia. In the 1980's he served on the Department's "Train the Trainer" team, which taught US Attorneys Offices across the county how to implement the then-new Sentencing Reform Act. He has held several posts in the federal government, including Special Assistant to the Secretary of Energy and Counselor to the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, in addition to the White House post. He has testified before Congress on issues in criminal procedure, illegal drugs, the US Sentencing Commission, and the death penalty, and has given numerous media interviews on those and other subjects. He currently teaches a seminar at Georgetown Law titled "Conservatism in Law in America" with his wife, Federalist Society co-founder Lee Liberman Otis.
Henry J. Friendly Professor of Law, Harvard Law School
Carol Steiker is the Henry J. Friendly Professor of Law and Faculty Co-Director of the Criminal Justice Policy Program at Harvard Law School. She specializes in the broad field of criminal justice, where her work ranges from substantive criminal law to criminal procedure to institutional design, with a special focus on issues related to capital punishment. Recent publications address topics such as the relationship of criminal justice scholarship to law reform, the role of mercy in the institutions of criminal justice, and the likelihood of nationwide abolition of capital punishment. Her most recent book, Courting Death: The Supreme Court and Capital Punishment, co-authored with her brother Jordan Steiker of the University of Texas School of Law, was published by Harvard University Press in November, 2016.
Professor Steiker is a graduate of Harvard Law School, where she served as president of the Harvard Law Review, the second woman to hold that position in its then 99-year history. After clerking for Judge J. Skelly Wright of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals and Justice Thurgood Marshall of the U.S. Supreme Court, she worked as a staff attorney for the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia, where she represented indigent defendants at all stages of the criminal process. In addition to her scholarly work, Professor Steiker has worked on pro bono litigation projects on behalf of indigent criminal defendants, including death penalty cases in the U.S. Supreme Court. She also has served as a consultant and expert witness on issues of criminal justice for non-profit organizations and has testified before Congress and state legislatures.