Defining Crimes, by the distinguished author team of William J. Stuntz (late of Harvard) and Joseph L. Hoffmann (Indiana), breaks from the tradition of Model Penal Code-centric casebooks and focuses instead on the rich intellectual and theoretical issues that arise from how crimes actually get defined and applied today by state and federal legislatures, trial and appellate courts, police, prosecutors, defense lawyers, and juries. The innovative approach of Defining Crimes enables the in-depth study of the problems and issues that affect the day-to-day contemporary practice of criminal law.
Prof. Hoffman is the Harry Pratter Professor of Law and Director for Strategic Projects at the University of Indiana, USA.
Hoffmann is an award-winning scholar and law teacher. As well as currently holding the Harry Pratter Professorship, he is a past recipient of the Law School Gavel Award and the university-wide Outstanding Young Faculty Award.
Before joining the Indiana Law faculty in 1986, Hoffmann clerked for the Hon. Phyllis A. Kravitch of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, and for the Hon. William H. Rehnquist of the U.S. Supreme Court.
A nationally recognized authority on the death penalty, he has also written extensively about criminal procedure and habeas corpus law. Hoffmann is co-author of a ground-breaking book on habeas corpus, Habeas for the 21st Century: Uses, Abuses and the Future of the Great Writ (University of Chicago Press, 2011) (with Nancy J. King). He is also a co-author of one of the leading casebooks in criminal procedure law, Comprehensive Criminal Procedure. He served as Co-Chair and Reporter for the Massachusetts Governor's Council on Capital Punishment, and has spearheaded successful death penalty reform efforts in Illinois and Indiana. Professor Hoffmann is also on the faculty of the National Judicial College, where he teaches about death penalty law.
Hoffmann has been a Fulbright Professor in 1996 at the University of Tokyo, and in 1997-98 was a Visiting Professor at its International Center for Comparative Law and Politics. In 2003-04, he was a Fulbright Professor at the Universities of Erlangen and Jena in Germany.