Joseph
L. Hoffman received his B.A. from Harvard College and his J.D.
from the University of Washington. He served as law clerk to the Honorable
Phyllis A. Kravitch, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, in
1984-85, and to Justice William H. Rehnquist, U.S. Supreme Court, in 1985-86.
Professor Hoffmann is the Harry Pratter Professor of Law at Indiana University - Bloomington, where he has taught since 1986. He is an award-winning scholar and law teacher whose courses include Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure, Seminar on Death Penalty Law, Seminar on the Law and Psychology of Criminal Law, and Law and Society of Japan.
A nationally recognized authority on the death penalty, Professor Hoffmann recently served as co-chair of the Massachusetts Governor’s Council on Capital Punishment. He drafted the Illinois Fundamental Justice Amendment, a reform proposal enacted into law by the Illinois legislature in 2003.
Professor Hoffmann has taught death-penalty law at the National Judicial College since 1987 and has written extensively about the death penalty, habeas corpus, and criminal procedure law. He was a Fulbright professor in 1996, and a visiting professor in 1997-98, at the University of Tokyo. Professor Hoffman was also a Fulbright professor in 2003-04 at the Universities of Erlangen and Jena in Germany.
