Shawn Fields

Shawn Fields is a Professor of Law and the Associate Dean of Research and Faculty Development at California Western School of Law. He earned his J.D., magna cum laude, from Boston University School of Law, where he served as an editor on the Boston University Law Review, and his B.A. from Yale University. Before entering academia, Fields practiced law at Latham & Watkins LLP in San Francisco, served as trial counsel at a boutique firm in San Diego, acted as a California criminal appellate specialist, and directed a refugee rights legal aid NGO in Tanzania while holding a joint appointment with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

Fields's scholarship centers on police legitimacy and reform, the Fourth Amendment, criminal theory, immigration and asylum law, and firearms law and policy. He has published in premier law journals, including the University of Chicago Law Review ("The Fourth Amendment Without Police," 2023), Georgetown Law Journal ("Searches and Seizures of the Unhoused," 2026), Cornell Law Review ("(Non)police Brutality," 2025), Northwestern University Law Review ("Second Amendment Sanctuaries," 2020), and others such as the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology ("Police Reform as System Justification," 2026) and U.C. Davis Law Review ("Protest Policing and the Fourth Amendment," 2021). His books include Neighborhood Watch: Policing White Spaces in America (Cambridge University Press, 2022) and The New Public Safety: Police Reform and the Lurking Threat to Civil Liberties (University of California Press, 2025). This work has influenced the field, with citations by the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, three state supreme courts, and multiple federal district courts. Fields teaches Civil Procedure I and II, Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure I, and a seminar on Police Practices and Reform. In 2024-2025, students selected him as both the 1L Professor of the Year and Professor of the Year. He contributes to public service through roles on the San Diego Community Review Board on Police Practices, the American Bar Association’s Legal Education Police Practices Consortium, and the AALS Criminal Law Section Executive Board. His expert commentary has appeared in Newsweek, Huffington Post, San Diego Union-Tribune, and the Charlotte Observer, with frequent media interviews on radio and television.