The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) is an American

criminal defense In the field of criminal law, there are a variety of conditions that will tend to negate elements of a crime (particularly the ''intent'' element), known as defenses. The label may be apt in jurisdictions where the ''accused'' may be assigned some ...

organization. Members include private

lawyers,

public defenders A public defender is a lawyer appointed to represent people who otherwise cannot reasonably afford to hire a lawyer to defend themselves in a trial. Several countries provide people with public defenders, including the UK, Hungary and Singapore, ...

, active

U.S. military The United States Armed Forces are the military forces of the United States. The armed forces consists of six service branches: the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force, Space Force, and Coast Guard. The president of the United States is the ...

defense counsel,

law Law is a set of rules that are created and are enforceable by social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior,Robertson, ''Crimes against humanity'', 90. with its precise definition a matter of longstanding debate. It has been vario ...

professors Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who professes". Professors ...

judge A judge is a person who presides over court proceedings, either alone or as a part of a panel of judges. A judge hears all the witnesses and any other evidence presented by the barristers or solicitors of the case, assesses the credibility an ...

s, and defense counsel in international criminal

tribunal A tribunal, generally, is any person or institution with authority to judge, adjudicate on, or determine claims or disputes—whether or not it is called a tribunal in its title. For example, an advocate who appears before a court with a single ...

s, including the

International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) was a body of the United Nations that was established to prosecute the war crimes that had been committed during the Yugoslav Wars and to try their perpetrators. The tribunal ...

. NACDL, headquartered in

Washington, D.C. ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...

, was founded in 1958, has nearly 9,000 direct members and 90 state, local, and international affiliate criminal defense lawyer organizations with a total of about 40,000 members.

Description

The organization has worked to build coalitions of legal organizations in order to provide a forum for important legal issues. Groups such as the

American Bar Association The American Bar Association (ABA) is a voluntary bar association of lawyers and law students, which is not specific to any jurisdiction in the United States. Founded in 1878, the ABA's most important stated activities are the setting of acad ...

American Civil Liberties Union The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1920 "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States". T ...

, the

Constitution Project The Constitution Project is a non-profit think tank in the United States whose goal is to build bipartisan consensus on significant constitutional and legal questions. Its founder and president is Virginia Sloan. The Constitution Project’s work ...

Federalist Society The Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies (abbreviated as FedSoc) is an American conservative and libertarian legal organization that advocates for a textualist and originalist interpretation of the U.S. Constitution. Headquartered ...

Heritage Foundation The Heritage Foundation (abbreviated to Heritage) is an American conservative think tank based in Washington, D.C. that is primarily geared toward public policy. The foundation took a leading role in the conservative movement during the presiden ...

, and the

Washington Legal Foundation The Washington Legal Foundation (WLF) is a non-profit legal organization located at 2007-2009 Massachusetts Avenue NW, on Embassy Row in Washington, D.C. Founded in 1977, the Foundation's stated goal is "to defend and promote the principles of f ...

have been involved with these projects. NACDL often submits ''

amicus curiae An ''amicus curiae'' (; ) is an individual or organization who is not a party to a legal case, but who is permitted to assist a court by offering information, expertise, or insight that has a bearing on the issues in the case. The decision on ...

'', or friend of the court, briefs in support of litigants at both the federal and state level in those cases that present issues of importance to criminal defendants, criminal defense lawyers, and/or the criminal justice system as a whole. ''The Champion'' magazine is the official journal of NACDL and offers timely, informative articles written for and by criminal defense lawyers, featuring the latest developments in

search and seizure Search and seizure is a procedure used in many civil law and common law legal systems by which police or other authorities and their agents, who, suspecting that a crime has been committed, commence a search of a person's property and confiscat ...

laws,

DUI Driving under the influence (DUI)—also called driving while impaired, impaired driving, driving while intoxicated (DWI), drunk driving, operating while intoxicated (OWI), operating under the influence (OUI), operating vehicle under the infl ...

/ DWI,

grand jury A grand jury is a jury—a group of citizens—empowered by law to conduct legal proceedings, investigate potential criminal conduct, and determine whether criminal charges should be brought. A grand jury may subpoena physical evidence or a pe ...

proceedings, ''

habeas corpus ''Habeas corpus'' (; from Medieval Latin, ) is a recourse in law through which a person can report an unlawful detention or imprisonment to a court and request that the court order the custodian of the person, usually a prison official, t ...

'', the

exclusionary rule In the United States, the exclusionary rule is a legal rule, based on constitutional law, that prevents evidence collected or analyzed in violation of the defendant's constitutional rights from being used in a court of law. This may be consider ...

death penalty Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is the state-sanctioned practice of deliberately killing a person as a punishment for an actual or supposed crime, usually following an authorized, rule-governed process to conclude that t ...

Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act is a United States federal law that provides for extended criminal penalties and a civil cause of action for acts performed as part of an ongoing criminal organization. RICO was en ...

(RICO), federal

sentencing guidelines Sentencing guidelines define a recommended sentencing range for a criminal defendant, based upon characteristics of the defendant and of the criminal charge. Depending upon the jurisdiction, sentencing guidelines may be nonbinding, or their applic ...

, forfeiture,

white-collar crime The term "white-collar crime" refers to financially motivated, nonviolent or non-directly violent crime committed by individuals, businesses and government professionals. It was first defined by the sociologist Edwin Sutherland in 1939 as "a ...

, and more. In 2012, NACDL launched The Criminal Docket

podcast A podcast is a program made available in digital format for download over the Internet. For example, an episodic series of digital audio or video files that a user can download to a personal device to listen to at a time of their choosing ...

. Hosted by Ivan J. Dominguez, it features a rundown of criminal justice news stories and interviews with "leaders in the legal practice, public policy, journalism, academia, and others whose lives intersect with the criminal justice system." NACDL regularly issues news releases on a variety of topics of interest to its membership and the public. Topics include pertinent legislation and regulations, report releases, adopted resolutions, and

U.S. Supreme Court 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 ...

case activity. The Association also writes reports and white papers on critical issues facing the American criminal justice system. Some examples include ''Collateral Damage: America’s Failure to Forgive or Forget in the War on Crime – A Roadmap to Restore Rights and Status After Arrest and Conviction'' (2014) and ''Summary Injustice: A Look at Constitutional Deficiencies in South Carolina’s Summary Courts'' (2016).

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:National Association Of Criminal Defense Lawyers Criminal defense organizations Law-related professional associations Legal advocacy organizations in the United States