Joseph Kennedy is a tenured Associate Professor of Law at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he teaches Criminal Law, Computer Crime Law, Criminal Justice Policy, Constitutional Law, and International and Comparative Criminal Law. His research interests include the sociology and politics of mass incarceration, communitarian theories of punishment, computer crime, and the Chinese Legal System. Kennedy also served as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at UNC Law School for the 2005-06 academic year.
Professor Kennedy's scholarly writings have been published in the Georgetown Law Journal, Michigan Law Review, Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review, the Journal of Law and Contemporary Problems, Emory Law Journal and the Hastings Law Review. His article, Monstrous Offenders and the Search for Solidarity Through Modern Punishment, was recently selected for publication in Criminal Law Conversations, a collection of seminal criminal law articles published in 2009 by Oxford University Press. His article on the connection between mental states in regulatory crimes and the federal sentencing guidelines was selected as best criminal law paper for the Stanford Yale Junior Faculty forum in 2002, and he was the recipient of a Pogue Research Leave at UNC in 2003 and an Ethics Fellowship at UNC's Institute of Arts and Humanities in 2004. He has presented his work at Harvard Law School, Stanford Law School, Yale Law School, the University College Dublin and the Annual Meetings of the Association of American Law Schools, Law and Society, the American Society of Criminology and the International Congress of Law and Mental Health. He is currently at work on a book on the cultural and political roots of mass incarceration in the United States for Oxford University Press and on a book chapter for the forthcoming Criminal Law Stories by Foundation Press.
Kennedy also comments regularly on criminal justice and ethical issues of public concern. He has published opinion editorials with Slate Magazine and the Raleigh News and Observer. He has appeared as a media commentator on NBC Nightly News, Fox Weekend Live, National Public Radio, Court TV and a number of local radio and television stations. He also lectures on ethical issues and is a Fellow at UNC's Parr Center for Ethics.
In 2007 Kennedy served on the U.S. Delegation to an international conference on reforming Chinese criminal law sponsored by the China University of Political Science and Law in Beijing and was a coauthor of the delegation's report.
Kennedy originally taught in UNC's Criminal Clinic from 1997 to 2003 and argued twice before the North Carolina Court of Appeals during that time. Previous to teaching at UNC, Professor Kennedy taught as a Lawyering Instructor at NYU School of Law where he taught Interviewing, Counseling, Negotiation, Trial Advocacy and Legal Writing. Prior to teaching, he practiced as a public defender for the City and County of San Francisco, a litigation associate for Morrison & Foerster in San Francisco, and as an advocate at a center for the homeless in Venice, California. He received his B.A degree with Honors in History from Stanford University and his J.D. from UCLA School of Law, where he served on the UCLA Law Review.
Curriculum Vitae