News Archive

Professor Shawn Boyne is one of a handful of legal experts who has been invited to deliver a new paper during the workshop titled “Prosecutors and Democracy,” slated for January 15 and 16. The workshop will explore the ways in which prosecutors exercise discretion as well as the issue of whether prosecutors are held accountable for their decision-making practices. The workshop is part of the Transnational Program on Criminal Justice at UCLA School of Law.

Professor Boyne’s latest book, The German Prosecution Service: Guardians of the Law? highlighted the extent to which German prosecutors follow their statutory mandate to investigate and prosecute cases through an objective lens. Professor Boyne’s conference paper, “German Prosecutors and the Rechtsstaat,” will explore the degree to which politics influences prosecutorial decision-making in Germany. Her paper will be reviewed by Professor David A. Sklansky of Stanford Law School.

The workshop will feature some of the world’s foremost experts in comparative criminal law including: Mathilde Cohen of the University of Connecticut School of Law; Angela J. Davis of the American University Washington College of Law; Antony Duff  of the University of Minnesota School of Law and professor emeritus in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Stirling in Scotland; Ingrid V. Eagly of the UCLA School of Law; Jacqueline Hodgson of the University of Warwick School of Law; Daniel C. Richman of the Columbia Law School; Jonathan Simon of the Berkeley School of Law; William J. Simon of the Columbia Law School and Stanford Law School); and David A. Sklansky of Stanford Law School. The event is being organized by Sklansky and Maximo Langer of Stanford Law School.

Professor Boyne is a former prosecuting attorney and practiced for several years as a defense attorney before pursuing her career in academia. She is a scholar of comparative law who has previously presented her work at Yale University, the University of Virginia, and Washington & Lee's School of Law, as well as in Austria, Germany, and England. Professor Boyne teaches a seminar in Comparative National Security Law at IU McKinney and serves as co-chair of the Global Crisis Leadership Forum. She is one of the founding members of the Comparative Law Professors blog.