Peter Davis
Associate Professor Emeritus

Peter  Davis
pdavis@tourolaw.edu

Education
B.A., with honors, 1969, Harvard University
J.D., 1972, New York University School of Law. Root-Tilden Scholar.


Courses
Criminal Law Clinic
Justice
Criminal Procedure Module
Criminal Law
Criminal Procedure
Admitted to the bar of New York, Professor Davis was a trial attorney in the Criminal Defense Division of the Legal Aid Society in New York City, where he spent eight years defending the rights of the indigent accused and attempting to change the criminal justice system.  After two years as a clinical instructor in the Criminal Law Clinic at New York University School of Law, training third-year law students to be criminal defense lawyers, he came to Touro, where he has taught primarily in the area of criminal law and procedure.  He was also chair of the board of the Andrew Glover Youth Program and a member of the Board of the Suffolk County Chapter of the New York Civil Liberties Union.  Professor Davis's litigation experience and publications have focused on the area of governmental misconduct, particularly police brutality.  He has advised and counseled whistleblowers, represented those subjected to police brutality, both in the criminal courts and the civil courts, studies police departments, and been Special Counsel to the Suffolk County Legislature Public Safety Committee's 1987 Investigation of Law Enforcement in Suffolk County.  He has also worked on developing innovative remedies for governmental misconduct through the use of private criminal prosecutions and citizen access to grand juries.  In recent years, he has studied and written about the need to expand the role of justice in legal education, proposing schools of justice.  He is also currently writing about the teaching of lawyering tactics to lawyers and law students. 

Publications
For Selected Works, click here.
Why Not a Justice School? On the Role of Justice in Legal Education and the Construction of a Pedagogy of Justice, 30 Hamline L. Rev. 513 (2007).

Rodney King and the Decriminalization of Policy Brutality in America: Direct and Judicial Access to the Grand Jury as Remedies for Victims of Policy Brutality when the Prosecutor Declines to Prosecute, 53 Md. L. Rev. 271 (1994).

The Crime Victim's "Right" to a Criminal Prosecution: A Proposed Model Statute for the Governance of Private Criminal Prosecutions, 38 DePaul L. Rev. 329 (1989).

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