Biography

A prolific scholar whose jurisprudential interests range from law and economics to cognitive psychology, Mark G. Kelman has applied social science approaches to diverse legal fields including criminal law, taxation, administrative regulation, and disability law. He has recently published a book, The Heuristics Debate (Oxford University Press, 2011), which focuses on disputes about the fundamental nature of heuristic reasoning associated, respectively, with the heuristics and biases school and the fast and frugal heuristics school. He is especially concerned with the implications of these debates for a wide variety of issues of both legal theory and policy (ranging from questions about whether values are commensurable or the ordinary tendency to spend more willingly to rescue identifiable victims than to prevent "statistical" lives from being lost is defensible to controversies over the efficacy of distinct forms of criminal sanctions). He has also been engaged in a substantial experimental research project on moral reasoning and has a long-term interest in whether neuroscientists can help us better understand judgment and decision making. He has also just started to investigate the role that "expertise" about memory might and might not reasonably play in reforming systemic practices and in adjudicating particular disputes. In addition to being a longtime teacher of both criminal law and property to first-year students, he has served as the academic coordinator, academic associate dean, and, currently, vice dean at the law school. Before joining the Stanford Law School faculty in 1977, Professor Kelman was the director of criminal justice projects for the Fund for the City of New York.

Key Works

• Mark G. Kelman, Hedonic Psychology and the Ambiguities of ‘Welfare’, 33 Philosophy & Public Affairs 391 (2005)
• Mark G. Kelman, Market Discrimination and Groups, 53 Stanford Law Review 833-896 (2001).
• Mark G. Kelman, Interpretive Construction in the Substantive Criminal Law, in Philosophy of Law, by Joel Feinberg and Jules Coleman, 6th ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Thompson Learning, 2000.
• Mark G. Kelman and Gillian Lester, Jumping the Queue: An Inquiry into the Legal Treatment of Students with Learning Disabilities, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998. 313 pages.

In the News

• Rights Gone Wrong - Why It’s Not Always Best To Treat Education As A Civil Right
  Slate, November 02, 2011

Courses & Programs

Courses

• Criminal Law
• Property

Publications & Cases

Recent Publications View All

• Mark Kelman, The Heuristics Debate, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.
• Mark Kelman, Saving Lives, Saving from Death, Saving from Dying: Reflections on 'Over-Valuaing' Identifiable Victims, 11 Yale Journal of Health Policy, Law, and Ethics 51 (2011)
• Mark G. Kelman, Saving Lives, Saving from Death, Saving from Dying, University of Georgia School of Law's 104th Sibley Lecture, March 25, 2009, Athens, Georgia.
• Mark Kelman, Defining the Antidiscrimination Norm to Defend It, 43 San Diego Law Review 735 (2006).
• Mark G. Kelman, Thinking About Sexual Consent (Book review: Alan Wertheimer, Consent To Sexual Relations) 58 Stanford Law Review 935 (2006).
• Mark G. Kelman, American Criminal Law: Cases, Statutes, and Comments, New York: Foundation Press, 2005. (with Markus D. Dubber)
• Mark G. Kelman, Hedonic Psychology and the Ambiguities of ‘Welfare’, 33 Philosophy & Public Affairs 391 (2005)
• Mark Kelman, Introduction to the Disability Rights Symposium, 14.2 Stanford Law & Policy Review 235-237 (2003).
• Mark Kelman, Law and Behavioral Science: Conceptual Overviews, 97 Northwestern University Law Review 1347-1392 (Spring 2003).
• Mark Kelman, Hedonic Psychology, Political Theory and Law (I): Is Welfarism Possible?, Stanford Law and Economics Olin Working Paper No. 242, 83 pages, (September 2002).