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Richard Bierschbach

Richard Bierschbach

Dean and John W. Reed Professor of Law

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Suite 3305
(313) 577-3933

Richard Bierschbach

  • Biography

    Richard A. Bierschbach is Dean and John W. Reed Professor of Law at Wayne State University Law School. He previously taught at Yeshiva University’s Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York, where he also served as Vice Dean.

    Dean Bierschbach is an award-winning teacher and a leading scholar of criminal law and procedure. His research explores how the criminal justice system’s institutional and procedural structure intersects with its substantive and regulatory aims. His work has appeared in numerous top law journals, including the Yale Law Journal, the Michigan Law Review, the Virginia Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, the Northwestern University Law Review, and the Georgetown Law Journal, among others. While at Cardozo, he twice received the Best Professor Award from the law school’s graduating class.

    Before entering academia, Dean Bierschbach clerked for Judge A. Raymond Randolph of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (1997-98) and Justice Sandra Day O’Connor of the U.S. Supreme Court (2000-01). Between those clerkships, he served as a Bristow Fellow in the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of the Solicitor General and an Attorney-Advisor in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel. He has also worked in the New York offices of three international law firms—Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering (now WilmerHale), Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, and Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe—as a member of their Supreme Court and appellate litigation practices.

    Dean Bierschbach received his bachelor’s degree in history (summa cum laude) from the University of Michigan (1994) and his law degree from the University of Michigan Law School (1997), where he won the Daniel H. Grady Prize for graduating first in his class and the Henry M. Bates Award, the law school’s highest honor. He has held various leadership positions within the American Bar Association and is an elected member of the American Law Institute and a Life Fellow of the American Bar Foundation.at Wayne State University Law School. He previously taught at Yeshiva University’s Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York, where he also served as Vice Dean.
     

  • Degrees and Certifications

    B.A., University of Michigan
    J.D., University of Michigan Law School

  • Academic Interests

     Criminal law and procedure, administrative and regulatory law, corporations

  • Areas of Expertise

     Administrative law, criminal law, criminal procedure, legal education

  • Selected publications

    The Administrative Law of the Eighth (and Sixth) Amendment, in The Eighth Amendment and Its Future in a New Age of Punishment (William Berry & Meghan Ryan eds., Cambridge University Press 2020)

    Equality in Multidoor Criminal Justice, 23 New Crim. L. Rev. 60 (2020)

  • Social Science Research Network
    View SSRN Profile
  • Accomplishments
    • Richard A. Bierschbachjoined 67 other judges, lawyers and law professors from around the United States and the world in being elected to membership in the American Law Institute. He was the only newly-elected member from Michigan.
    • Richard A. Bierschbachpresented “The Administrative Law of the Eighth Amendment” at the Ninth Annual Constitutional Law Colloquium at Loyola University-Chicago School of Law.
    • Richard A. Bierschbachco-authored with Stephanos Bibas an article titled, “Rationing Criminal Justice,” which was published in the Michigan Law Review. The article examines American criminal justice through a public- and regulatory-law lens.

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