Nora Demleitner writes and comments on criminal justice issues and almost anything connected to crime. She connects criminal law and sentencing matters to other pressing social justice issues, especially health care and immigration. Her research into criminal justice practices abroad often informs her views.
Her decade-long experience as a university administrator taught her much about higher education and law schools in particular. She happily shares her insights on that topic, too, whether in speaking engagements or in writing. Her work in university administration was always results driven, informed by her belief that for an institution to thrive its students must be challenged and supported to succeed inside and outside the law school. The institution itself must be as much anchored in its local community as it must compete internationally.
Writing about current issues is an opportunity for Nora to learn herself, to share her insights and shed light on issues that need to be investigated more deeply. That attitude allows her to take teaching outside the classroom. One of her passions is mentoring, and she enjoys encountering many of her former students online and in person.
Currently Nora holds the Roy L. Steinheimer Jr Professorship of Law at Washington and Lee University in Virginia, where she served previously as dean. Her academic writing has covered many areas, including criminal, comparative and immigration law as well as legal education. She knows much about sentencing and collateral sentencing consequences. She regularly speaks on all these issues, often in a comparative context, both in the United States and Europe.
Even though she is a German native and graduated from a German Gymnasium, Nora received her J.D. from Yale Law School, her B.A. from Bates College, and an LL.M. with distinction in International and Comparative Law from Georgetown University Law Center. After law school she clerked for the Hon. Samuel A. Alito, Jr., then a member of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.
Nora has taught at a number of law schools. She served on the faculties of the Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University where she was the dean for five years and St. Mary’s University School of Law in San Antonio where she got her start into academia. At SUNY Buffalo’s Baldy Center she was a senior research fellow. She was the Boden Visitor at Marquette Law School, and held visiting appointments at the University of Michigan Law School and St. Thomas University School of Law in Miami. In addition, she taught in Europe, at the University of Freiburg, Germany and the Sant’ Anna Institute of Advanced Research in Pisa, Italy. Multiple times she was a visiting researcher at the Max-Planck-Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law in Germany, funded by German Academic Exchange Service grants. She was selected as a Fulbright awardee.
Nora is an editor of the Federal Sentencing Reporter, and served on the executive editorial board of the American Journal of Comparative Law. She is the lead author of Sentencing Law and Policy, a major casebook on sentencing law, published by Wolters Kluwer/Aspen Law & Business. Her articles have appeared in the Stanford, Michigan, and Minnesota law reviews, among others.
Nora serves on the board of the Prison Policy Initiative and the Collateral Consequences Resource Center. Closer to home she is a board member at the Renaissance High School and sits on Region 10’s Community Services Board.
Professor Demleitner is an elected member of the International Academy of Comparative Law, the American Law Institute, the European Law Institute, and a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation.
