Brent Newton
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Columbia Law School (J.D.)
Professor of Law
Brent Newton | |
|---|---|
| Born | Brent Evan Newton |
| Education | University of North Carolina (B.A.) Columbia Law School (J.D.) |
| Occupations | Deputy Staff Director at United States Sentencing Commission Professor of Law |
| Website | Georgetown Law Biography |
Brent Evan Newton is an American legal scholar, the former deputy staff director at the United States Sentencing Commission, and a professor of law at Penn State Dickinson Law, Georgetown University Law Center, and American University Washington College of Law.
Newton graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Columbia Law School, where he was a James Kent Scholar and a Senior Editor of the Columbia Law Review.[1] After graduating from law school in 1992, he clerked for Judge Carolyn Dineen King of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.[1] After his clerkship, Newton worked as a public defender in both the state and federal systems.[2] In that role, Newton also represented death row inmates in the American South.[1]
Newton has argued before the United States Supreme Court. In 2008, Newton argued Gonzalez v. United States.[3][4] In 2010, Newton was elected as a member of the American Law Institute.[5] In 1993, at the age of twenty-five, Newton handled a capital murder appeal to the United States Supreme Court.[6][7]
American legal education
In "Preaching What They Don’t Practice: Why Law Faculties’ Preoccupation with Impractical Scholarship and Devaluation of Practical Competencies Obstruct Reform in the Legal Academy," Newton criticizes the legal academy's reliance upon law review articles for tenure consideration, rather than preparing students to practice law.[8][9][10]
Death penalty
Newton has written about the death penalty with particular emphasis on the Texas system in which he practiced for many years. In “Capital Punishment: Texas Could Learn a Lot from Florida" (1998), Newton surmised that Texas's high actual execution numbers could be attributed to three factors at that time: the way judges were elected, a weak public defender system, and a flawed jury system that did not allow for the consideration of mitigating evidence.[11]
Law review articles
Newton wrote for SCOTUSblog on the value of law review articles for United States Supreme Court justices.[12] According to Newton, about half of all Supreme Court opinions cited at least one law review article in the 1970s and 1980s. Since 2000, however, the rate is" just 37 percent — even as Supreme Court opinions have grown longer and more elaborate."[13]