Professor Daniel Richman

Daniel Richman

  • Paul J. Kellner Professor of Law
Education

J.D., Yale University, 1984
A.B., Harvard University, 1980

Areas of Study
Areas of Specialty

National Security
Privacy
Criminal Procedure
Adjudication
Evidence
Federal Criminal Law
Surveillance/Cybersecurity

A former federal prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, Daniel Richman teaches and writes about criminal adjudication; federal criminal law; sentencing; and cybersecurity, data privacy, and surveillance law. His recent scholarship includes the article “Accounting for Prosecutors,” which addresses prosecutorial discretion and the power of prosecutors to shape criminal law, and “Understanding Recent Spikes and Longer Trends in American Murders” (with Columbia Law Professor Jeffrey Fagan). 

Richman is a recipient of Columbia University’s Presidential Award for Teaching. Before joining the faculty in 2007, he taught at Fordham Law School and the University of Virginia School of Law. In addition to his experience at the U.S. Attorney’s Office, where he was the chief appellate attorney and worked in both the organized crime and narcotics units, Richman clerked for Justice Thurgood Marshall on the U.S. Supreme Court and Chief Judge Wilfred Feinberg on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circut.

Richman has served as an adviser to former FBI Director James B. Comey and as a consultant to the U.S. Department of Justice and Department of the Treasury. Under New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Richman served as chairman of the Local Conditional Release Commission. He is currently a faculty adviser to the Columbia Law School Center for the Advancement of Public Integrity.

Publications

  • “How Federalism Built the FBI, Sustained Local Police, and Left Out the States (with Sarah Seo),” 17 Stan. J. C. R. & C. L. 421 (2022), available https://ssrn.com/abstract=3714325.
  • “Defining Crime, Delegating Authority—How Different are Administrative Crimes?,” 39 Yale J. on Reg. 304 (2021), available http://ssrn.com/abstract=3803618.
  • “Law Enforcement Organization Relationships,” in Oxford Handbook of Prosecutors and Prosecution (Ronald F. Wright, et al., eds. 2021).
  • “Police Reform Won’t Work Unless It Involves Federal and State Governments,” The Washington Post, July 7, 2020 (with Sarah A. Seo).
  • “Partisan Politics and Federal Law Enforcement: The Promise and Corruption of Reconstruction” (book review), Lawfare, July 22, 2019.
  • “A Quarter Century of Supreme Court Criminal Procedure Work: Three Constitutional Brushes,” Nouveaux Regards sur de Modèles Classiques de Démocratie Constitutionalle: États-Unis, Europe (ed. Eleonora Bottini, et al.), 2018.
  • “Getting Encryption onto the Front Burner,” Lawfare, Oct. 26, 2017.
  • “Accounting for Prosecutors,” Prosecutors and Democracy: A Cross-National Study, ed. Maximo Langer and David Sklansky (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2017).
  • “Understanding Recent Spikes and Longer Trends in American Murders” (with Jeffrey Fagan), 117 Columbia Law Review 2035 (2017).
  • “Informants and Cooperators,” Bridging the Gap: A Report on Scholarship and Criminal Justice Reform (Erik Luna ed., 2017).
  • “Disaggregating the Criminal Regulatory State,” The New Criminal Justice Thinking (Sharon Dolovich and Alexandra Natapoff, eds., 2017).
  • “Corporate Headhunting,” 8 Harvard Law & Policy Review 901 (2014).
  • “Framing the Prosecution,” 87 University of Southern California Law Review 673 (2014).
  • “Federal White Collar Sentencing in the United States—A Work in Progress,” 76 Law & Contemporary Problems 53 (2013).
  • “Overcriminalization for Lack of Better Options: A Celebration of Bill Stuntz,” The Political Heart of Criminal Procedure: Essays on Themes of William J. Stuntz (Michael Klarman, David Skeel & Carol Steiker, eds. 2012).
  • “Tribute to William Stuntz,” 124 Harvard Law Review 1849 (2011).
  • “Political Control of Federal Prosecutions—Looking Back and Looking Forward,” 58 Duke Law Journal 2087 (2009) (Administrative Law symposium).
  • “Federal Sentencing in 2007: The Supreme Court Holds—The Center Doesn’t,” 117 Yale Law Journal 1374 (2008).
  • “Decisions about Coercion: The Corporate Attorney-Client Privilege Waiver Problem,” 57 DePaul Law Review 295 (2008).
  • “Institutional Coordination and Sentencing Reform,” 84 Texas Law Review 2055 (2006) (symposium on Punishment Law and Policy).
  • “The Past, Present, and Future of Violent Crime Federalism,” in 34 Crime and Justice: A Review of Research 377 (2006).
  • “United States v. Salerno,” Criminal Procedure Stories (Carol S. Steiker, ed., Foundation Press, 2006).
  • “Al Capone’s Revenge: An Essay on the Political Economy of Pretextual Prosecution” (with William J. Stuntz), 105 Columbia Law Review 583 (2005).
  • “The Right Fight: Local Police and National Security,” Boston Review (Dec. 2004/Jan. 2005) (with response to commentators).
  • “Prosecutors and Their Agents, Agents and Their Prosecutors,” 103 Columbia Law Review 749 (2003).
  • “‘Project Exile’ and the Allocation of Federal Law Enforcement Authority,” 43 Arizona Law Review 369 (2001). 
  • “The Changing Boundaries Between Federal and Local Enforcement,” Boundary Changes in Criminal Justice Organizations, vol. 2 of Criminal Justice 2000 (National Institute of Justice, NCJ 182409, July 2000).
  • “Grand Jury Secrecy: Leaks from an Empty Bucket,” 36 American Criminal Law Review 339 (1999).
  • “Criminal Law, Congressional Delegation, and Enforcement Discretion,” 46 UCLA Law Review 757 (1999).
  • “The Process of Terry-Lawmaking,” 72 St. John’s University Law Review 1043 (1998).
  • “Old Chief v. United States: Stipulating Away Prosecutorial Accountability,” 83 Virginia Law Review 939 (1997).
  • “Bargaining About Future Jeopardy,” 49 Vanderbilt Law Review 1181 (1996)
  • “Cooperating Clients,” 56 Ohio State Law Journal 69 (1995).

Honors and Awards

Presidential Award for Teaching

2015

Remarks and Testimony

  • Testimony before the Senate Subcommittee on Criminal Justice Oversight of the Judiciary Committee, May 13, 1999: Miranda and 18 U.S.C. § 3501.
  • Brief of Griffin B. Bell, and other former or present law enforcement officials, as Amici Curiae in Support of Petitioner in Dickerson v. United States (Miranda case), U.S. Sup. Ct. 2000 (co-author).
  • Testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, September 18, 2007: Justice Department policies relating to the corporate attorney-client privilege.
  • Written Statement on Validity of Fifth Amendment Privilege Assertion by Lois Lerner, submitted to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, June 27, 2013.
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