Jennifer L. Mnookin is an American legal scholar and academic leader, currently serving as Chancellor of the University of Wisconsin–Madison. A leading expert on the law of evidence and

forensic science Forensic science, also known as criminalistics, is the application of science to criminal and civil laws, mainly—on the criminal side—during criminal investigation, as governed by the legal standards of admissible evidence and criminal ...

, she previously served as Dean of the UCLA School of Law, where she was David G. Price and Dallas P. Price Professor of Law. While at UCLA Law, she co-founded and co-directed the Program on Understanding Law, Science and Evidence (PULSE@UCLA Law). From 1998 to 2005, Mnookin was on the faculty of the

University of Virginia School of Law The University of Virginia School of Law (Virginia Law or UVA Law) is the law school of the University of Virginia, a public research university in Charlottesville, Virginia. It was founded in 1819 by Thomas Jefferson as part of his "academical v ...

, with one year (2002-03) spent as a visiting professor at

Harvard Law School Harvard Law School (Harvard Law or HLS) is the law school of Harvard University, a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest continuously operating law school in the United States. Each class ...

. 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. 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.

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

. She grew up in

Berkeley Berkeley most often refers to: *Berkeley, California, a city in the United States **University of California, Berkeley, a public university in Berkeley, California * George Berkeley (1685–1753), Anglo-Irish philosopher Berkeley may also refer ...

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. 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.

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,'' and ''Modern Scientific Evidence: The Law and Science of Expert Testimony''. Much of her work has focused on the problems of forensic science evidence, especially pattern identification evidence like latent fingerprint identification. She has frequently commented to the press on forensic science and evidence issues and has occasionally consulted or served as an expert witness on the scientific foundation of fingerprint evidence. Her research on

was cited extensively by the

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nati ...

' 2009 report. She is a former member of the National Academy of Science's Committee on Science, Technology and the Law and is on the advisory board of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. She was the primary investigator for a

National Institute of Justice The National Institute of Justice (NIJ) is the research, development and evaluation agency of the United States Department of Justice. NIJ, along with the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA), Office of Juvenil ...

project that sought to develop objective metrics for measuring the difficulty of fingerprint comparisons. Her work on the Confrontation Clause was cited and discussed by the

Supreme Court of the United States The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...

in ''Williams v. Illinois'' (2012). 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. 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 The American Law Institute (ALI) is a research and advocacy group of judges, lawyers, and legal scholars established in 1923 to promote the clarification and simplification of United States common law and its adaptation to changing social needs. ...

, a leading organization dedicated to improving and modernizing the law, in 2011.

Personal life

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

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mnookin, Jennifer American legal scholars American legal writers Legal educators People from Greater Los Angeles UCLA School of Law faculty 1967 births Living people Harvard College alumni The Harvard Crimson people Yale Law School alumni Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni Leaders of the University of Wisconsin-Madison