Center for Criminal Justice

Center for Criminal Justice

Center for Criminal Justice

Police car on a city street

Research

About

An understanding of criminal justice is fundamental to any lawyer’s education. At the University of Virginia, the nation’s leading criminal law faculty offer an in-depth array of courses on both the substantive criteria of guilt or innocence and the procedures used in the arrest, prosecution and punishment of offenders. Working under the auspices of the school’s Center for Criminal Justice, which serves as a hub for scholarship and activities involving criminal law, the faculty are engaged with research designed to help make a more just society.

Virginia students do not study criminal law only from a distance. They also enroll in clinics that offer hands-on involvement in juvenile justice, criminal prosecution or defense, and innocence cases. The Law School supplements its curriculum with a wide range of extracurricular activities dedicated to criminal law, including a journal devoted to criminal law and an active Innocence Project.

Collectively, these experiences lead Virginia graduates to coveted positions in the U.S. Department of Justice Honors Program, in U.S. attorneys’ offices, and in district attorney and defense offices across the country.

Navigating the Derek Chauvin Trial: The Law and Policing

Professors Anne Coughlin and Rachel Harmon Participate in Panel

Deirdre Enright
Faculty Director
  • Professor of Law, General Faculty
  • Director, Center for Criminal Justice
  • Director, Project for Informed Reform
Rachel A. Harmon
Faculty Director
  • Harrison Robertson Professor of Law
  • Class of 1957 Research Professor of Law
  • Director, Center for Criminal Justice