Jennifer Mnookin

Jennifer L. Mnookin is an American legal scholar and academic leader, serving as chancellor of the University of Wisconsin–Madison since 2022.[1] A leading expert on the law of evidence and forensic science, she previously served as dean of the UCLA School of Law, where she was David G. Price and Dallas P. Price Professor of Law.[2] While at UCLA Law, she co-founded and co-directed the Program on Understanding Law, Science and Evidence (PULSE@UCLA Law).[3] From 1998 to 2005, Mnookin was on the faculty of the University of Virginia School of Law, with one year (2002-03) spent as a visiting professor at Harvard Law School. She joined the faculty of UCLA Law in 2005, where she then served as vice dean for faculty and research from 2007–09, vice dean for external appointments and intellectual life from 2012–13, and dean from 2013-2022. On April 23, 2020, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.[4] On May 16, 2022, the University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents announced they had unanimously chosen Mnookin to be the 30th chancellor of the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She took office on August 4, 2022.[5]

Jennifer Mnookin
Chancellor of the University of Wisconsin, Madison
Assumed office
August 4, 2022
Preceded byJohn Scholz (acting)
Personal details
EducationHarvard University (AB)
Yale University (JD)
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (PhD)

Early life and education

Born in 1967 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Jennifer Mnookin is the daughter of Dale Mnookin and Robert Mnookin, the Samuel Williston Professor of Law at Harvard Law School.[6] She grew up in Berkeley and Palo Alto, California. For college she returned to Cambridge, Massachusetts to attend Harvard College, where she became an editor for The Harvard Crimson and earned her A.B. in 1988.[7] She received her J.D. from Yale Law School in 1995 and a Ph.D. in the history and sociology of science and technology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1999.[8]

Career

Her scholarship focuses on the interconnections between evidence, science and technology, and legal and cultural ideas about proof and persuasion. She has written on topics ranging from the history of photographic evidence to the complexities of the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment with respect to expert evidence. She is a co-author of The New Wigmore, A Treatise on Evidence: Expert Evidence.[9] Much of her work has focused on the problems of forensic science evidence, especially pattern identification evidence like latent fingerprint identification.[8] She has frequently commented to the press on forensic science and evidence issues[10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17] and has occasionally consulted or served as an expert witness on the scientific foundation of fingerprint evidence.[18]

Her research on forensic science was cited extensively by the National Academy of Sciences' 2009 report.[19] She is a former member of the National Academy of Science's Committee on Science, Technology and the Law[20] and is on the advisory board of the Electronic Privacy Information Center.[21] She was the primary investigator for a National Institute of Justice project that sought to develop objective metrics for measuring the difficulty of fingerprint comparisons.[22] Her work on the Confrontation Clause was cited and discussed by the Supreme Court of the United States in Williams v. Illinois (2012).[23] In 2016, she co-chaired an advisory group to the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, which issued a report on the reliability of forensic science used in the courtroom.[24][25]

In her role as a law school administrator, Mnookin is a former member of the steering committee of the Association of American Law Schools' Dean's Forum. Mnookin was named a member of the American Law Institute, a leading organization dedicated to improving and modernizing the law, in 2011.[26]

Personal life

Mnookin is married to Joshua Foa Dienstag,[27] a professor of political science and law at UCLA.[28] They have two children, Sophia and Isaac.[29]

References
  1. "Jennifer Mnookin named chancellor". University of Wisconsin–Madison. May 16, 2022. Archived from the original on November 12, 2022. Retrieved May 16, 2022.
  2. "Biography Page". law.ucla.edu. Archived from the original on December 14, 2017. Retrieved January 24, 2018.
  3. "About the Program on Understanding Law, Science, and Evidence". www.law.ucla.edu. Archived from the original on April 27, 2018. Retrieved January 24, 2018.
  4. "New 2020 Members Announced". American Academy of Arts & Sciences. April 23, 2020. Archived from the original on April 23, 2020. Retrieved April 24, 2020.
  5. "Jennifer Mnookin named chancellor". University of Wisconsin–Madison. May 16, 2022. Archived from the original on November 12, 2022. Retrieved May 16, 2022.
  6. "Robert H. Mnookin". Harvard Law School. Archived from the original on February 2, 2014. Retrieved January 24, 2014.
  7. "Congratulations, Crimson Class of '88, And Good Luck". The Harvard Crimson. Archived from the original on February 1, 2014. Retrieved January 24, 2014.
  8. "BiographyPage". law.ucla.edu. Archived from the original on December 14, 2017. Retrieved January 24, 2018.
  9. "The New Wigmore: A Treatise on Evidence". Wolters Kluwer Law Store. CCH Incorporated. Archived from the original on February 18, 2023. Retrieved February 18, 2023.
  10. "The Real CSI". Public Broadcasting System. Archived from the original on December 2, 2013. Retrieved January 24, 2014.
  11. Mnookin, Jennifer. "The Achilles' Heel of Fingerprints". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on December 15, 2013. Retrieved January 24, 2014.
  12. Mnookin, Jennifer (August 23, 2011). "The 'West Memphis Three' and combating cognitive biases". The Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on February 17, 2014. Retrieved January 24, 2014.
  13. Mnookin, Jennifer (February 19, 2009). "Clueless 'science'". The Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on February 22, 2014. Retrieved January 24, 2014.
  14. Russell, Sue. "Bias and the Big Fingerprint Dust-Up". Pacific Standard. Archived from the original on February 2, 2014. Retrieved January 24, 2014.
  15. Steinhauer, Jennifer (July 9, 2010). "'Grim Sleeper' Arrest Fans Debate on DNA Use". The New York Times. Archived from the original on March 4, 2014. Retrieved January 24, 2014.
  16. Liptak, Adam (August 11, 2008). "In U.S., Expert Witnesses Are Partisan". The New York Times. Archived from the original on March 4, 2014. Retrieved January 24, 2014.
  17. Edwards, Harry T.; Mnookin, Jennifer L. (September 20, 2016). "A wake-up call on the junk science infesting our courtrooms". Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Archived from the original on January 24, 2018. Retrieved January 24, 2018.
  18. "United States of America v. Raynard Council" (PDF). swgfast.org. Archived from the original (PDF) on February 3, 2014. Retrieved January 24, 2014.
  19. Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States. The National Academies Press. 2009. doi:10.17226/12589. ISBN 978-0-309-13130-8. Archived from the original on February 2, 2014. Retrieved January 24, 2014.
  20. "Current CSTL Members". sites.nationalacademies.org. NASEM. Archived from the original on March 4, 2018. Retrieved January 24, 2018.
  21. "EPIC Advisory Board". Electronic Privacy Information Center. Archived from the original on March 8, 2018. Retrieved February 18, 2023.
  22. Gavel, Lauri (February 11, 2010). "UCLA professors awarded major federal grant to study error rates in fingerprint evidence". UCLA Newsroom. Archived from the original on July 11, 2014. Retrieved January 24, 2018.
  23. "Williams v. Illinois". Archived from the original on May 21, 2022. Retrieved January 24, 2014.
  24. "Report to the President: Forensic Science in Criminal Courts" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on January 24, 2018. Retrieved January 24, 2018.
  25. Kisliuk, Bill. "Q&A with Jennifer Mnookin: Raising the bar for scientific evidence in court". UCLA Newsroom. Archived from the original on January 24, 2018. Retrieved January 24, 2018.
  26. Institute, The American Law. "Members | American Law Institute". American Law Institute. Archived from the original on January 24, 2018. Retrieved January 24, 2018.
  27. "Weddings; Jennifer Mnookin, Joshua Dienstag". The New York Times. May 29, 1994. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on January 25, 2018. Retrieved January 27, 2018.
  28. "Joshua Foa Dienstag". UCLA Department of Political Science. Archived from the original on April 17, 2014. Retrieved April 16, 2014.
  29. "Reflections on Law Teaching". October 8, 2014. Archived from the original on August 3, 2018. Retrieved August 2, 2018.
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