Chapman Dialogue Series: Jennifer Mnookin

Jennifer L. Mnookin assumed the role of Dean and David G. Price and Dallas P. Price Professor of Law at UCLA School of Law in August 2015. A leading evidence scholar and a member of the UCLA Law faculty since 2005, Dean Mnookin previously served as Vice Dean for Faculty and Research from 2007 to 2009, and Vice Dean for Faculty Recruitment and Intellectual Life in 2012-13.

Dean Mnookin’s teaching focuses on evidence law and torts, as well as more specialized courses in expert and scientific evidence, wrongful convictions, and law and popular culture. She is a co-author of two well-regarded treatises, The New Wigmore, A Treatise on Evidence: Expert Evidence and Modern Scientific Evidence: The Law and Science of Expert Testimony. She has published extensively on issues relating to forensic science, including latent fingerprint identification, handwriting expertise, and DNA evidence, and has advocated for the need for a “research culture” in these areas. Dean Mnookin is also known for her scholarship on expert evidence more generally, as well as evidence theory, the Confrontation Clause, and visual and photographic evidence.

Dean Mnookin is the Faculty Co-Director of PULSE @ UCLA Law (Program on Understanding Law, Science & Evidence). She is currently a member of the National Academy of Sciences’ Committee on Science, Technology and Law and was elected to the American Law Institute in 2011. She has spearheaded amicus briefs on behalf of a group of evidence professors in several recent Confrontation Clause cases before the Supreme Court; she was the primary investigator on a major grant from the National Institute of Justice to investigate the relationship between difficulty and error rate in latent fingerprint identification; and she has participated in a variety of governmental working groups related to forensic science.

Prior to joining the UCLA Law faculty, Dean Mnookin was Professor of Law and Barron F. Black Research Professor at the University of Virginia School of Law, and Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. She received her A.B. from Harvard University, her J.D. from Yale Law School, and a Ph.D. in History and Social Study of Science and Technology from M.I.T.