Research Expertise and Interest

criminal procedure, computer crime law, surveillance technologies, fourth amendment, information privacy law

Research Description

Orin Kerr joined the Berkeley Law faculty in 2019.  He specializes in criminal procedure and computer crime law, and he has also taught courses in criminal law, evidence, and professional responsibility. His scholarship includes more than 70 law review articles, over 40 of which have been cited in judicial opinions (including eight articles that have been cited in U.S. Supreme Court opinions).

Kerr has been ranked the 5th most-cited legal scholar by HeinOnline as well as the most-cited law professor in criminal law and procedure by the Leiter Reports.  He has authored several casebooks and co-authored the leading criminal procedure treatise.  These days he also wastes a lot of time on Twitter.

Before joining academia, Professor Kerr was a Trial Attorney in the Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section at the U.S. Department of Justice and a Special Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia. He earned a B.S.E. n Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from Princeton, an M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School.  He was a law clerk for Judge Leonard I. Garth of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and Justice Anthony M. Kennedy of the United States Supreme Court.