UC Hastings College of the Law was founded in 1878 as the first law department of the University of California, and today is one of the top-rated law schools in the United States. Our alumni span the globe and are among the most respected lawyers, judges and business leaders today. Our faculty are nationally renowned as both teachers and scholars.

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Awarded by the American Psychology-Law Society.

Honorary Distinguished Member

Awarded in The Annual AALS Call for Scholarly Papers.

Honorable Mention (2nd Place)

Awarded by the University of Virginia, School of Law to acknowledge the best written work by a graduating student, University of Virginia, School of Law.

Roger and Madeline Traynor Prize

California State Bar : Member (Since 1992)

MacArthur Foundation Law and Neuroscience Network : Member (Since 2011)

MacArthur Foundation G2i Committee (A Subcommittee of the MacArthur Foundation Law and Neuroscience Network) : Principal Investigator (Since 2011)

Institute for Linguistic Evidence : Advisory Council (Law) (Since 2010)

American Law Institute : Member (Since 2006)

American Judicature Society : National Commission on Forensic Science and Public Policy, Member (Since 2005)

Encyclopedia of Forensic and Legal Medicine : Member, Editorial Advisory Board (Since 2002)

Law and Neuroscience: Recommendations Submitted to the President's Bioethics Commission

Toward a Jurisprudence of Psychiatric Evidence: Examining the Challenges of Reasoning from Group Data in Psychiatry to Individual Decisions in the Law

Sargon Enterprises V. U.S.C. - A Different Perspective

Neuroscientists in Court

The Reliability of Latent Print Individualization: Brief of Amici Curiae Submitted on Behalf of Scientists and Scholars by the New England Innocence Project, Commonwealth v. Patterson

"Faigman is one attorney who hasn't shied away from insisting that judges stay up to speed with scientific knowledge."     -The Christian Science MonitorSuppose that scientists identify a gene sequence that predicts the likelihood that a person will commit a serious crime in the future. Laws are passed making genetic tests mandatory, and anyone displaying the genes is sent to a treatment facility. Would the laws be constitutional? In this illuminating history, legal scholar David L. Faigman wrestles with these moral and political conundrums, revealing the tension between science and the law. The Supreme Court works by precedent, while science works through constant innovation. In the nineteenth century, eugenics and phrenology helped decide the "race question" in the famous Dred Scott and Plessy v. Ferguson cases; Roe v. Wade set a standard for the viability of a fetus that, just thirty years later, could become obsolete with modern medicine. And how does the Fourth Amendment apply in a world filled with high-tech surveillance devices?To ensure our liberties, Faigman argues, the Court must embrace science rather than resist it, turning to the lab as well as to precedent.

Laboratory of Justice: The Supreme Court's 200-Year Struggle to Integrate Science and the Law

This poster-sized flowchart depicts operations within the individual Restyled Federal Rules of Evidence and the relationships between different rules.

Faigman's Federal Rules of Evidence Map, 2012-2013

David Faigman's Constitutional Fictions is the first book-length examination of the role of fact-finding in constitutional cases.  Because the role of facts is central to the day-to-day realities of constitutional law, Faigman provides an extraordinarily important analysis of a subject that has been largely ignored by constitutional scholars.  To show how contemporary facts play into constitutional analysis, Faigman examines some of the most controversial subjects of the late twentieth century, including physician-assisted suicide, abortion, sexual predators, free speech, and privacy. The Constitution is popularly thought of as a static document that embodies fundamental values and foundational principles of governance.  However, the values and principles that the Constitution embodies must be applied to the circumstances and challenges of changing times.  Constitutional Fictions explains how contemporary facts should be incorporated into constitutional decisions, thus allowing the Constitution to endure for the ages.

Constitutional Fictions: A Unified Theory of Constitutional Facts

This book is a student edition spin-off from the popular Science Law. The authors introduce law students to the rigors and details underlying scientific expert testimony, offering an entry point to a host of scientific fields that are highly relevant to the law. The book is designed to acquaint law students with scientific fields that are crucial to practicing law. Subjects reviewed include admissibility of scientific evidence. ethical standards of, and those concerning expert witnesses, statistical proof, survey research, epidemiology, and toxicology.

Science In The Law: Standards, Statistics, and Research Issues (American Casebook Series and Other Coursebooks)

Is scientific information misused by this country’s court system and lawmakers?  Today more than ever before, lawyers, politicians, and government administrators are forced to wrestle with scientific research and to employ scientific thinking.  The results are often less than enlightened.In Legal Alchemy, David Faigman explores the ways the American legal system incorporates scientific knowledge into its decision making.  Praised by both legal and scientific communities when it first appeared in hardcover, Legal Alchemy shows how science has been used and misused in a variety of settings, including• The Courtroom—from the O. J. Simpson trial to the Dow Corning silicone breast implant lawsuit to landmark cases such as Roe v. Wade.  • The Legislature—where Congress uses scientific information to help enact legislation about clean air, cloning, and government science projects like the space station and the superconducting super collider.  • Government Agencies—who use science to determine policy on a variety of topics, from regulating sport utility vehicles to reintroducing gray wolves to Yellowstone National Park. As Faigman describes these and other important cases, he provides disturbing evidence that many judges, juries, and members of Congress simply don’t understand the science behind their decisions.  Finally, he offers suggestions on how the science and legal professions can overcome their miscommunication and work together more effectively.

Legal Alchemy: The Use and Misuse of Science in the Law

This book is a student edition spin-off from the popular Science Law. The authors introduce law students to the rigors and details underlying scientific expert testimony, offering an entry point to a host of scientific fields that are highly relevant to the law. The book is designed to acquaint law students with scientific fields that are crucial to practicing law. Subjects include identification by fingerprints, handwriting, bitemarks, or voice, alcohol and drug testing, and DNA testing.

Science in the Law: Forensic Science Issues (American Casebook Series) (American Casebook Series and Other Coursebooks)

volume 1: statistics & research methods
volume 2: social & behavioral science
volume 3: medicine, toxicology & epidemiology
volume 4: forensics
volume 5: forensics, engineering & economics

Modern Scientific Evidence the Law and Science of Expert Testimony 2012-1013 Edition Volumes 1 - 5

This book features the following salient topics: The General Assumptions and Rationale of Forensic Identification; DNA Typing; Parentage Testing; Fingerprint Identification; Handwriting Identification; Firearms and Toolmark Identifications; Bullet Lead Analysis; Identification from Bitemkars; Talker Identification; Polygraph Tests; Fires, Arsons and Explosions; and Alcohol and Drug Testing.

Modern Scientific Evidence: Forensics, 2008 Student Edition (American Casebook Series)

Chancellor & Dean David Faigman is the John F. Digardi Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of California Hastings College of the Law and holds an appointment as Professor in the School of Medicine (Dept. of Psychiatry) at the University of California, San Francisco. He received both his M.A. (Psychology) and J.D. from the University of Virginia. Professor Faigman clerked for the Honorable Thomas M. Reavley, Senior Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.  

He is the author of over 50 articles and essays, and has published in a variety of outlets, including the Chicago, Virginia, Pennsylvania and Northwestern law reviews, Science, Sociological Methods & Research and Nature Reviews Neuroscience. He is also the author of three books, Constitutional Fictions: A Unified Theory of Constitutional Facts (Oxford, 2008), Laboratory of Justice: The Supreme Court’s 200-Year Struggle to Integrate Science and the Law (Henry Holt & Co. 2004) and Legal Alchemy: The Use and Misuse of Science in the Law (W.H. Freeman,1999). In addition, Professor Faigman is a co-author/co-editor of the five-volume treatise Modern Scientific Evidence: The Law and Science of Expert Testimony (with Cheng, Mnookin, Murphy Sanders & Slobogin). The treatise has been cited widely by courts, including several times by the U.S. Supreme Court. Professor Faigman was a member of the National Academies of Science panel that investigated the scientific validity of polygraphs, is a member of the MacArthur Law and Neuroscience Network and served as a Senior Advisor to the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology’s Report, “Forensic Science in Criminal Courts: Ensuring Scientific Validity of Feature-Comparison Methods.”

Science Policy

Scientific Evidence

Peer Review; Expert Testimony

Constitutional Law

Scientific Methods for Lawyers

Publications

UCSF/UC Hastings Consortium

Law Review Articles on SSRN

Red Flags: Early Warnings of Wrongful Convictions

Junk science? Another inmate on death row fights to disprove arson

Evidence From Bite Marks, It Turns Out, Is Not So Elementary

Chancellor & Dean | John F. Digardi Distinguished Professor of Law

David Faigman presents Neurobiology of Violence: Issues of Admissibility and the Challenge of Reasoning Group Data to Individual Decision Making (G2i) at the Colloquium on Law, Neuroscience, and Criminal Justice on March 14 -- 15, 2013 in Palo Alto, California.  Professor Faigman is the John F. Digardi Distinguished Professor of Law at UC Hastings College of Law and Associate Dean of the UCSF/UC Hastings Consortium on Law, Science & Health Policy. The colloquium was sponsored by the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Law and Neuroscience and co-sponsored by the Federal Judicial Center, Vanderbilt Law School, Stanford Center for Law and the Biosciences, and the Gruter Institute for Law and Behavioral Research.  

Description and Learning Objectives: This session provides an introduction to what is presently known, and unknown, about the neurobiology of violence. It will also consider when and how this expert knowledge should be considered by courts, with particular focus on the challenges of making inferences from group-averaged data for individualized adjudication. Specific learning objectives include:

• Discussion of the challenges of reasoning from group scientific data to individualized legal decision making, and presentation of the research of the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Law and Neuroscience to address this "G2i" challenge.

Learn more:  www.lawneuro.org


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