Janet C. Hoeffel
Catherine D. Pierson Professor of Law
Education & Affiliations
Biography
Janet (Jancy) Hoeffel specializes in criminal law and procedure, death penalty law and evidence. Her prior work experience includes six years as a public defender for the District of Columbia, where she practiced both trial and appellate advocacy, and as a litigator with a firm in Denver, Colorado.
Hoeffel’s current research focuses on the dearth of constitutional or statutory protections in the critical period between arrest and formal charging.
In “Charging Time,” forthcoming in the Iowa Law Review, and “Criminal (Dis)Appearance,” 88 George Washington Law Review 392 (2020), she and her co-author expose the enormous costs of prolonged pre-charge detention without process. She also has focused on the constitutional regulations of discretionary actors in the criminal justice system, such as in her article, "The Warren Court and the Birth of the Reasonably Unreasonable Officer", 49 Stetson Law Review 289 (2020), and “Miranda’s First Principles,” 50 Texas Tech Law Review 113 (2017). She also co-authored two casebooks and a hornbook on criminal investigative and adjudicative procedure.
Hoeffel joined the Tulane Law School faculty in 1999 and served as vice dean from 2009-2012. She received the Felix Frankfurter Award for Distinguished Teaching, the law school’s most prestigious teaching honor, from the Class of 2005 and 2019. She was one of eight law professors invited to participate in an Innovation Summit on improving assessment tools for law students in 2013. In 2017, she received Tulane University’s highest teaching honor, the President’s Award for Excellence in Professional and Graduate Teaching.
Hoeffel also has served on the Louisiana Public Defender Board, where she rewrote the statewide practice standards for criminal defense attorneys, and the boards of the Innocence Project, the Capital Appeals Project and the Promise of Justice Initiative. She has served as an expert witness on the death penalty and on effective assistance of counsel, testified before the Louisiana legislature and frequently given expert commentary for news media.
Contributions
Selected Publications
Janet C. Hoeffel (with Pamela R. Metzger), "Charging Time", 108 Iowa Law Review --- (forthcoming 2022).
Janet C. Hoeffel (with Pamela R. Metzger), "Criminal (Dis)Appearance," 88 George Washington Law Review 392 (2020).
Janet C. Hoeffel, "The Warren Court and the Birth of the Reasonably Unreasonable Officer", 49 Stetson Law Review 289 (2020).
Janet C. Hoeffel," Miranda’s First Principles", 50 Texas Tech Law Review 113 (2017).
Janet C. Hoeffel, "Death Beyond a Reasonable Doubt," 68 Arkansas Law Review 267 (2017).
Janet C. Hoeffel & Stephen I. Singer, "Elections, Power and Local Control: Reining in Chief Prosecutors and Sheriffs," 15 U. MD. L.J. RACE, RELIGION, GENDER & CLASS 319 (2015).
Janet C. Hoeffel & Stephen I. Singer, "Activating a Brady Pretrial Duty to Disclose Favorable Information: From the Mouths of Supreme Court Justices to Practice", 38 New York University Review of Law and Social Change 467 (2015).
Janet C. Hoeffel, "The Jurisprudence of Death and Youth: Now the Twain Should Meet," 46 Texas Tech Law Review 29 (2013).
Janet C. Hoeffel & Stephen I. Singer, "Fear and Loathing at the U.S.", 82 Mississippi Law Journal 833 (2013).
Janet C. Hoeffel, "The Roberts Court’s Failed Innocence Project", 85 Chicago-Kent Law Review 43 (2010).
Janet C. Hoeffel, "Toward a More Robust Right to Counsel of Choice", 44 San Diego Law Review 525 (2007).
Janet C. Hoeffel, Deconstructing the Cultural Evidence Debate, 17 Florida Journal of Law and Public Policy 303 (2006).
Janet C. Hoeffel, "Prosecutorial Discretion at the Core: The Good Prosecutor Meets Brady," 109 Penn. State Law Review 1133 (2005).
Janet C. Hoeffel, "Risking the Eighth Amendment: Arbitrariness, Juries, and Discretion in Capital Cases," 46 Boston College Law Review 771 (2005).
Janet C. Hoeffel, "The Sixth Amendment’s Lost Clause: Unearthing Compulsory Process", 2002 Wisconsin Law Review 1275.
Janet C. Hoeffel, "The Gender Gap: Revealing Inequities in Admission of Social Science Evidence in Criminal Cases", 24 University of Arkansas Little Rock Law Review 41 (2001).
Other Legal Writing
Janet C. Hoeffel, Teaching to the Test, 10 Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law 647 (2013).
Janet C. Hoeffel, Note, The Dark Side of DNA Profiling: Unreliable Scientific Evidence Meets the Criminal Defendant, 42 Stanford Law Review 465 (1990).
Janet C. Hoeffel, Tribute: In Memory of John Kaplan, 42 Stanford Law Review 852 (1990).
