About Alan Hirsch

I am a professor/attorney/writer, educated at Amherst College (B.A. in Philosophy, 1981) and Yale Law School (J.D., 1985).  While my work has embraced numerous aspects of both the civil and criminal justice systems, during the last five years I have increasingly focused my attention on false confessions – studying it, writing about it, and assisting attorneys as a retained expert consultant and/or witness. 

I currently teach legal studies at Williams College, after previous stints teaching constitutional law and other law-related subjects at Bennington College and Hartwick College.  My involvement with the law over two decades also includes:

·          Law Clerk for Judge Edward Becker on the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.

·          Court Attorney for a New York state criminal and family court judge.

·          Senior Attorney/Writer for the Federal Judicial Center, authoring materials designed to assist federal judges in the administration of justice.

·          Author of six books and monographs, a dozen scholarly articles in leading law journals, and more than twenty op-eds and magazine articles on various aspects of the legal system, appearing in The Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Washington Times, and Newsday, among other publications.