Bennett Capers

Bennett Capers is Professor of Law and Director of the Center on Race, Law, and Justice at Fordham Law School. His academic interests include the relationship between race, gender, technology, and criminal justice.

Professor Capers’ articles and essays have been published or are forthcoming in the California Law Review (twice), Columbia Law Review, Cornell Law Review, Fordham Law Review, Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review (twice), New York University Law Review, North Carolina Law Review, Notre Dame Law Review, Michigan Law Review, and UCLA Law Review, among others. In addition to co-editing the forthcoming Critical Race Judgments: Rewritten U.S. Court Opinions on Race and Law (Cambridge University Press) (with Devon Carbado, Robin Lenhardt, and Angela Onwuachi-Willig) and Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Criminal Law Opinions (Cambridge University Press) (with Corey Rayburn Yung and Sarah Deer), he also has a forthcoming book about prosecutors, The Prosecutor’s Turn (Metropolitan Books). His commentary and op-eds have appeared in the New York Times and other journals.

Professor Capers has thrice been voted Teacher of the Year. He is an elected member of the American Law Institute, a Director of Research for the Uniform Laws Commission, a Senior Technology Fellow at the NYU Policing Project, and has served as Chair of the AALS Criminal Justice Section and Chair of the AALS Law and Humanities Section. Governor Cuomo has twice appointed him to serve on judicial screening committees, first the New York State Judicial Screening Committee for the New York Court of Claims, and then the New York Judicial Screening Committee for the Second Department. In 2013, he served as Chairperson of the AALS 2013 Conference on Criminal Justice. That same year, Judge Scheindlin appointed him to Chair the Academic Advisory Council to assist in implementing the remedial order in the stop-and-frisk class action Floyd v. City of New York. He has also served for several years as a Commissioner on the NYC Civilian Complaint Review Board. In 2009, Professor Capers received the Lawrence A. Stessin Prize for Outstanding Scholarly Publication.

Prior to teaching, Professor Capers spent nearly ten years as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York. His work trying several federal racketeering cases earned him a nomination for the Department of Justice’s Director’s Award in 2004. He also practiced with the firms of Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton and Willkie Farr & Gallagher. He clerked for the Hon. John S. Martin, Jr. of the Southern District of New York.