Anna Offit
Associate Professor of Law
Full-time faculty
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214-768-2580 |
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Anna Offit writes and teaches about criminal law, evidence, juries, prosecutorial ethics, and empirical legal research. Her current scholarship examines trial strategy and the inclusivity of the criminal jury. Her articles have been published or are forthcoming in the Northwestern Law Review, UCLA Law Review, Minnesota Law Review, North Carolina Law Review, Fordham Law Review, Washington Law Review, Ohio State Law Journal, UC Davis Law Review, UC Irvine Law Review, and the Political and Legal Anthropology Review. She is also the author of a book, The Imagined Juror: How Hypothetical Juries Influence Federal Prosecutors (NYU Press, 2022). Offit's research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, U.S.-Norway Fulbright Foundation, Lois Roth Foundation, and Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies.
At SMU, Offit has been the recipient of various awards for her teaching on criminal law, evidence, and criminal jury reform. These include the 2024-2025 Altshuler Distinguished Teaching Award (a university-wide prize), the 2023 Don M. Smart Teaching Award (the law school's highest teaching honor), and the 2022 SMU Women in Law Distinguished Professor Award.
Offit received her JD from the Georgetown University Law Center where she served as Editor-in-Chief of the Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics and as a law clerk at the Department of Justice’s Office for Civil Rights. She also holds a PhD in Anthropology from Princeton University.
Prior to joining the faculty at SMU, Offit served as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at NYU Law School’s Civil Jury Project. She was also the recipient of a Fulbright grant to study the abolition of Norway’s jury system.
Area of expertise
- Criminal Law
- Legal Ethics
- Evidence
- Juries
- Discrimination
- Trial Strategy
- Empirical Legal Research
Education
A.B., summa cum laude, Princeton University
M.Phil., University of Cambridge
J.D., Georgetown Law
Ph.D., Princeton University
Courses
Criminal Law
Evidence
Jury Reform
Books
THE IMAGINED JUROR: HOW HYPOTHETICAL JURIES INFLUENCE FEDERAL PROSECUTORS (NYU Press 2022)
Articles
The Specter of Jury Nullification, UCLA Law Review (forthcoming)
Rethinking the Way we Judge Jurors, 93 George Washington Law Review (forthcoming) (invited symposium)
Reimagining the Inclusive Jury, 57 UC Davis Law Review 4 (2024)
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Religious Convictions, 101 North Carolina Law Review 2 (2023)
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The Character of Jury Exclusion, 106 Minnesota Law Review 2173 (2022)
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Antidiscrimination Law through a Sociolegal Lens, Alabama Law Review 4 (2022) (invited symposium)
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Benevolent Exclusion, 96 Washington Law Review 613 (2021)
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Race-Conscious Jury Selection, 82 Ohio State Law Journal 1 (2021)
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Playing by the Rule: How ABA Model Rule 8.4(g) Can Regulate Jury Exclusion, 89 Fordham Law Review 4 (2021) (invited colloquium)
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Utfordringer ved komparative juryundersøkelser: Tilfellet Norge, Tidsskrift for strafferett (2019) [The Challenges of Comparative Jury Research: The Norwegian Case, Journal of Criminal Justice]
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Prosecuting in the Shadow of the Jury, 113 Northwestern University Law Review 1071 (2019)
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Strengthening the Civil Jury, 31 California Litigation 3 (2018) (with Richard L. Jolly)
The Jury is Out: An Ethnographic Study of Lay Participation in the Norwegian Legal System, Political and Legal Anthropology Review (2019)
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With Jurors in Mind: An Ethnographic Study of Prosecutors' Narratives, Law, Culture and the Humanities Journal (2017)
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Peer Review: Navigating Uncertainty in the United States Jury System, 6 U.C. Irvine Law Review 169 (2016)
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Giving Life to the Death Penalty, Political and Legal Anthropology Review (2016) (review essay)
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The Conscience and Culture of Prosecution: An Introduction, 25 Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics 4 (2012)
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Ethical Guidance for a Grander Jury, 24 Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics 761 (2011)
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Book chapters
Striking Jurors with Hardship Excuses, in RESEARCH HANDBOOK ON JURY DECISION MAKING (Edward Elgar Publishing, forthcoming 2026)
Dismissing the Jury: Mixed Courts and Lay Participation in Norway, in JURIES, LAY JUDGES, AND MIXED COURTS: A GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE (Cambridge University Press 2021)
Storied Justice: The Narrative Strategies of US Federal Prosecutors, in THE EMERALD HANDBOOK OF NARRATIVE CRIMINOLOGY (Emerald Publishing Limited 2019)
Trial Processes, in INTERNATIONAL ENCYCLOPEDIA OF ANTHROPOLOGY (Wiley 2018)
Other publications
Review: Steven Brill on the History of Arbitration Clauses, 3 Jury Matters 6 (2018)
Injustice Behind Closed Doors: Civil Juries and the #MeToo Movement, 3 Jury Matters 3 (2018)
The Long Shadow of the Civil Jury Trial, 3 Jury Matters 2 (2018)
The Humanities and Public Life by Peter Brooks, Hilary Jewett, 48 Law & Society Review 991 (2014) (book review)
Report on Sexual Victimization in Prisons and Jails, U.S. Department of Justice, Washington, DC, 2012 (contributing law clerk)
Media
ABC 8, quoted in Can Aaron Dean get a fair trial in Tarrant County? Experts say yes, but a conviction would be rare (June 2022)
ABA Journal, Interview, Judges differ on when it's safe to hold in-person jury trials (February 2021)
Inside Sources, Op-Ed, Technology can’t replace in-person jury trials, but it may help during a pandemic (June 2022)
The Hill, Op-Ed, It's time to build a pandemic-proof, juror-friendly trial (May 2020)
Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Op-Ed, Guyger trial demonstrates power of juries. Here’s how we can make them even stronger (October 2019)
The New York Times, Letter to the Editor: The Jury's Duty When the Law Is Unfair (December 2011)