January 8, 2025 – Stanford, CA – Stanford Law School announced today that Orin Kerr (MS ’94) has joined the faculty as a professor of law. Widely recognized as a leading authority on the Fourth Amendment, Kerr was instrumental in developing the field of computer crime law, which focuses on the adaptation of traditional legal doctrines to digital crime and digital evidence. Prior to his academic career, Kerr served as trial lawyer in the Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section of the Department of Justice.
Kerr’s scholarship includes more than 80 law review articles, more than half of which have been cited in judicial opinions, including eight articles referenced in U.S. Supreme Court decisions. He is the author of the casebook, Computer Crime Law, the first of its type dedicated entirely to computer crime law, and co-author of a leading criminal procedure treatise. His forthcoming book, The Digital Fourth Amendment: Privacy and Policing in Our Online World, will be published by Oxford University Press later this year.
“I am thrilled to join Stanford Law. There’s no better place to teach and write about technology law,” said Kerr, who received his MS in mechanical engineering from Stanford University. “When you combine Stanford’s top tech law and criminal law faculty with its clinics, like the Supreme Court Clinic and the Juelsgaard Intellectual Property and Innovation Clinic—all right in the heart of Silicon Valley—it’s an ideal place for me to be.”
George Triantis, JSD ’89, Richard E. Lang Professor of Law and Dean of Stanford Law, said Kerr’s scholarship “has profoundly influenced how we understand issues of privacy and law enforcement in the digital age. With Orin’s arrival, we reinforce Stanford Law’s leading role in addressing the opportunities and challenges of emerging technologies across areas of legal scholarship and practice.”
Kerr has briefed and argued cases in the U.S. Supreme Court and three federal circuits, as well as testified six times before Congressional committees. Immediately prior to joining Stanford Law, Kerr was the William G. Simon Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law. He also has served on the faculties of the George Washington University Law School and the University of Southern California Gould School of Law, and has been a visiting law professor at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Chicago.
From 2013-2019, Kerr served on the Advisory Committee for the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure by appointment of U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts. After receiving his JD, magna cum laude, from Harvard Law School, he clerked for Judge Leonard I. Garth of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and Justice Anthony M. Kennedy of the United States Supreme Court.
Influential Criminal Procedure and Computer Crime Scholar Joins Stanford Law School Faculty
