Faculty Profiles
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Erin Murphy
Title: Assistant Professor of Law
Office: 424 Boalt Hall (North Addition)
Tel: 510-643-6092
Email Address: emurphy@law.berkeley.edu
FSU Contact: Constance Curtin
Erin Murphy joined the Boalt faculty from the Public Defender Service (PDS) for the District of Columbia, where she spent three years in the trial division and two years in the appellate division. While at PDS, Murphy represented clients in felony and misdemeanor cases in jury and bench trials, and argued before the D.C. Court of Appeals. She also led a widely watched constitutional challenge to the District of Columbia's firearms laws, and acquired particular expertise in the scientific and legal issues surrounding the admissibility of various types of forensic evidence. Murphy is a graduate of the Harvard Law School, where she served as a notes editor for the Harvard Law Review and an oralist for the champion team in the Ames Moot Court competition. She clerked for Judge Merrick B. Garland of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
Murphy's research focuses on questions related to new technologies and the relationship between the individual and the state in the criminal justice context. Her particular interests include forensic DNA typing, biometric scanning, electronic tracking and functional MRI imaging. The Duke Law Journal published her recent article, "Paradigms of Restraint," which won the AALS Criminal Justice Section award for best paper by a junior scholar. Other representative works include "The New Forensics: Criminal Justice, False Certainty and the Second Generation of Scientific Evidence" in the California Law Journal and "Inferences, Arguments, and Second Generation Forensic Evidence" in the Hastings Law Journal. Murphy teaches courses related to criminal law, criminal procedure and evidence.
Education:
A.B, Dartmouth College (1995)J.D., Harvard University (1999)
