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Scott Howe
Interim Dean and Frank L. Williams Professor of Criminal Law

Email: swhowe@chapman.edu
Phone: (714) 628-2516

Scott Howe was appointed Interim Dean of Chapman University School of Law on February 1, 2010. He served as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs from 1999 to 2007 and has been a professor at the school since August, 1996. Dean Howe has substantial experience both as a criminal defense lawyer and as a teacher in the fields of criminal law, criminal procedure and evidence. He earned his B.A., summa cum laude, in economics, from the University of Missouri, where he was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. He earned his J. D., cum laude, from the University of Michigan, where he was Administrative and Articles Editor on the Michigan Law Review. After law school, he worked for five years as an attorney for the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia, defending indigent persons charged with serious crimes, including first degree murder. He subsequently served as Deputy Director of the Texas Death Penalty Resource Center, in Austin, Texas, representing inmates under execution warrants on Texas' death row. His representation during this period of death-row inmate Kerry Max Cook is recounted in Mr. Cook’s acclaimed memoir, Chasing Justice: My Story of Freeing Myself After Two Decades on Death Row for a Crime I Didn’t Commit. Before coming to Chapman, Dean Howe taught as an adjunct professor at the University of Texas Law School and then became a tenured full professor at Western New England College School of Law. At Chapman, he has twice been voted Professor of the Year by the student body. His articles have appeared in a variety of leading law journals, including the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, the Iowa Law Review, and the Vanderbilt Law Review. He is also a co-author of the second edition of Understanding Capital Punishment Law, a treatise published in 2008 by LexisNexis.

Courses Taught: Evidence and Criminal Procedure

Publications