Jocelyn Simonson

Jocelyn Simonson is a Professor of Law at Brooklyn Law School. She writes and teaches about criminal law, criminal procedure, evidence, and social change. In particular, Professor Simonson studies bottom-up interventions in the criminal legal system by directly impacted people, asking how these real-life interventions should inform our conceptions of the design of criminal legal institutions, the state’s provision of public safety, the discourse of constitutional rights, and the popular meanings of justice, safety, and “the people.”

Professor Simonson is writing a book, forthcoming with The New Press, on how social movements contest the ideas that uphold the carceral state through communal tactics of resistance like bail funds, courtwatching, participatory defense, and people’s budgets. Her law review articles have appeared or are forthcoming in the Harvard Law Review, Yale Law Journal, Stanford Law Review, Columbia Law Review, California Law Review, and Michigan Law Review. Professor Simonson’s scholarship has been cited twice by the Supreme Court, and was designated “Must Read” by the NACDL Getting Scholarship Into Courts Project. Prior to joining academia, Professor Simonson spent five years as a public defender with the Bronx Defenders and clerked for the Hon. Barrington Parker, Jr. on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. She is also on the advisory board of the Community Justice Exchange.