Malcolm Feeley is the Claire Sanders Clements Dean's Professor Emeritus of Law at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law. He received his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Minnesota in 1969, an M.A. in Political Science and Sociology of Law from the University of Minnesota in 1967, and a B.A. in Political Science and English from Austin College in 1964. Feeley's academic career includes serving as Professor of Law at UC Berkeley since 1984 and Claire Sanders Clements Dean's Professor since 1996. Prior positions encompass Assistant to Full Professor of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin from 1977 to 1984, Russell Sage Foundation Fellow and Lecturer at Yale Law School from 1972 to 1977, and Instructor to Assistant Professor at New York University from 1968 to 1972. He directed the Center for the Study of Law and Society at UC Berkeley from 1985 to 1992 and held extensive visiting appointments, including Fulbright Distinguished Professor at Flinders University in Australia in 2012-2013, Martin and Kathleen Crane Fellow at Princeton University in 2008-2009, and multiple visits to Hebrew University, University of Haifa, and other international institutions.

Feeley's research centers on the criminal process, courts and social policy, federalism, prison reform, and historical studies of crime and punishment. Among his influential publications are The Process is the Punishment: Handling Cases in a Lower Court (Russell Sage Foundation, 1979; winner of the American Bar Association Silver Gavel Award in 1980 and American Sociological Association Outstanding Book Award in 1985), Court Reform on Trial: Why Simple Solutions Fail (Basic Books, 1983), Judicial Policy Making and the Modern State: How the Courts Reformed America’s Prisons (with Edward Rubin, Cambridge University Press, 1998), and Federalism: Political Identity and Tragic Choice (with Edward Rubin, University of Michigan Press, 2008). He has edited volumes such as Power Divided: Studies in Federalism (1989) and Fighting for Political Freedom (with Terry Halliday and Lucien Karpik, 2008). Feeley received the Harry Kalven Lifetime Achievement Award in Law and Social Science from the Law and Society Association in 2015, served as President of the Law and Society Association from 2005 to 2007, and was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2020. A conference honoring his work was held at UC Berkeley in 2015. His scholarship has profoundly shaped understandings of criminal justice processes, court reform, and federalism in the legal academy.

Professional Email: mfeeley@law.berkeley.edu