Rutgers Law–Newark Introduces Criminal Law Certificate Program
Rutgers School of Law–Newark, whose faculty includes top scholars and emerging stars in the field of criminal law and criminal procedure as well as adjunct professors who are distinguished members of the bench and bar, has introduced a Certificate Program in Criminal Law and Procedure.
The program gives students with a special interest in criminal law practice, whether on the prosecution or defense side, the opportunity to pursue that interest in a structured framework and to achieve special recognition for doing so.
Said Vice Dean Reid K. Weisbord, “The certificate program has already generated a great deal of interest among our students. We look forward to seeing the program grow and perhaps lead to the development of certificate programs in other fields as well.”
The Certificate Program in Criminal Law and Procedure is designed to ensure that students are exposed to a broad range of issues in criminal law and procedure, have the experience of writing a supervised research paper, and obtain practical experience in the field.
The program is open to all Rutgers students who have completed their first year of law school. Students are required to successfully complete the basic 4-credit course in Evidence plus an additional minimum of 15 credits in approved upper-level criminal law and criminal procedure-related courses. To obtain the certificate, a student must have an overall GPA of 3.0 or higher in his or her criminal law and procedure courses at the time of graduation.
The Rutgers–Newark criminal law faculty is distinguished in numerous ways, including by its:
- Books: Double Jeopardy: The History, the Law; The Miranda Debate; The Supreme Court on Trial: How the American Justice System Sacrifices Innocent Defendants; Confessions of Guilt: From Torture to Miranda and Beyond; and Criminal Procedure: Cases, Principles and Policies (Professor George C. Thomas); Lying, Cheating, and Stealing: A Moral Theory of White Collar Crime; Thirteen Ways to Steal a Bicycle: Theft Law in the Information Age; Philosophical Foundations of Criminal Law; and the forthcoming Criminalizing Sex (Professor Stuart P. Green); Victims’ Rights and Victims’ Wrongs: A Theory of Comparative Criminal Liability (Professor Vera Bergelson); and the forthcoming Law and Morality at War (Professor Adil Haque)
- Litigation: Victories in juvenile justice matters – State in the Interest of V.A., State in the Interest of P.M.P., State in the Interest of Y.C. (Professor Laura Cohen)
- Honors: J. Willard Hurst Summer Institute in Legal History Fellow (Professor Taja-Nia Henderson); speaker, invitation-only third Annual Junior Faculty Forum for International Law (Professor Jorge Contesse); National Juvenile Defender Center’s Robert E. Shepherd Award for Excellence in Juvenile Defense, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Champion of Change Award, and ACLU-NJ Legal Leadership Award (Professor Laura Cohen).