Position overview

Position title: Assistant Professor of Law

Salary range: The current salary range for this position is $203,900 - $333,600 (9-month academic year salary), however, off-scale salary and other components of pay, which would yield compensation that is higher than this range, are offered to meet competitive conditions.

Anticipated start: July 1, 2027

Position description

The Jurisprudence and Social Policy (JSP) PhD Program in the School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley invites entry-level and early-career lateral applicants for a full-time, tenure-track faculty position with a primary research and curricular focus on the criminal legal system in its practical, institutional, historical, social, economic, and political contexts. We seek applications from scholars versed in qualitative and/or quantitative research methods and with a demonstrated record of and/or potential for outstanding scholarship in the field that contributes to its interdisciplinary development. Possible areas of specialization might include but certainly are not limited to: criminal courts; policing and civil rights; mass incarceration; race and the carceral state; abolition and reform; punishment and society; the economics of crime; and the politics of law and order. We welcome applicants who engage with social impact, public engagement, and social justice in their scholarship. Our search is open to comparativists and scholars whose work is primarily on a non-U.S. legal system. However, we are particularly interested in applicants who will have at least a substantial comparative interest in the US criminal legal system.

JSP represents disciplinary and interdisciplinary training across the social sciences, history, and philosophy/political theory, and takes primary responsibility for directing a diverse student body in our PhD program. JSP faculty also are primarily responsible for and teach core courses in Berkeley's interdisciplinary undergraduate Legal Studies major.

The JSP Program attracts a diverse student body with a variety of experiences before graduate school. The JSP Program is committed to methodological pluralism and encourages scholars to apply who are willing and able to mentor graduate and undergraduate students whose research uses a range of methods and theoretical traditions.

The JSP Program is committed to addressing the family needs of faculty, including dual career couples and single parents. We are also interested in candidates who have had non-traditional career paths or who have taken time off for family reasons, or who have achieved excellence in careers outside academia.