Professor of Law
jbessler@ubalt.edu
410.837.4690
John and Frances Angelos Law Center, Room 1106
Administrative Assistant: Tiffany Ralph
410.837.4561
John and Frances Angelos Law Center, Room 1112
Education
M.ST., University of Oxford
M.F.A., Hamline University
J.D., Indiana University School of Law
B.A., University of Minnesota
Areas of Expertise
Administrative Law
Capital Punishment
Civil Procedure
Contracts
Human Rights
Lawyering Skills
Legal Writing
Torts
Bessler has taught at the University of Baltimore School of Law since 2009. He also has taught at the University of Minnesota Law School, the George Washington University Law School, the Georgetown University Law Center, Rutgers School of Law, the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, and the University of Trento in Italy. He clerked for U.S. Magistrate Judge John M. “Jack” Mason of the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota from 1996 to 1998, and practiced law full-time for many years in Minneapolis as a civil litigator. In 2018, he was awarded the University System of Maryland Board of Regents’ Faculty Award for Research, Scholarship and Creative Activity and was a visiting scholar/research fellow at the University of Minnesota Law School’s Human Rights Center.
He has taught courses in administrative law, civil procedure, contracts, capital punishment, international human rights law, lawyering skills/legal writing, and torts at the University of Baltimore School of Law, and he is the faculty advisor to the moot court program. He has also been of counsel to the Minneapolis law firm of Berens & Miller, P.A., which handles complex commercial litigation, and he has been an adjunct professor at the Georgetown University Law Center since 2010. He was previously an associate at the Minneapolis law firm of Faegre & Benson (now Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath LLP) and a partner at the Minneapolis law firm of Kelly & Berens, P.A., now Berens & Miller, P.A.
He has written or edited twelve books, many on the topic of capital punishment and others on the foundation or origins of American law. One of his books, The Celebrated Marquis: An Italian Noble and the Making of the Modern World (Carolina Academic Press, 2018), is a biography of the eighteenth-century Italian philosopher Cesare Beccaria—the first Enlightenment thinker to make a comprehensive argument against the death penalty. He also has written extensively about the Beccaria, the Enlightenment, and criminal justice issues in The Baron and the Marquis: Liberty, Tyranny, and the Enlightenment Maxim That Can Remake American Criminal Justice (Carolina Academic Press, 2019) and The Birth of American Law: An Italian Philosopher and the American Revolution (Carolina Academic Press, 2014). The Birth of American Law was the recipient of the prestigious 2015 Scribes Book Award, an annual award given out since 1961 by The American Society of Legal Writers for “the best work of legal scholarship published during the previous year.” That book also earned the First Prize in the American Association for Italian Studies Book Award competition (18th/19th century category) and was the Gold Winner in the IndieFab Book Award competition for works of history.
The Celebrated Marquis traces the global influence of the Italian philosopher and economist Cesare Beccaria (1738-1794) on economics and the world’s constitutions and laws, and The Birth of American Law documents the influence of the Italian Enlightenment and Beccaria’s writings on the American Revolution and early American constitutions. Beccaria’s book, Dei delitti e delle pene (1764), translated into French and then into English as An Essay on Crimes and Punishments (1767), had a major influence on America’s founders and early American laws. The Celebrated Marquis was the winner of the 2018 Next Generation Indie Book Award for biography, and it was also named a finalist in four other book award competitions. The Baron and the Marquis, about the history and future of American criminal justice reform, traces the origins of a maxim developed by Montesquieu and publicized by Beccaria. That maxim: any punishment that goes beyond necessity is “tyrannical.”
Bessler’s undergraduate degree from the University of Minnesota is in political science, and in addition to an M.F.A. in Writing from St. Paul’s Hamline University, he has a master’s degree in international human rights law from Oxford University. His law degree is from the Indiana University School of Law in Bloomington, where he was the Senior Managing Editor of the Indiana Law Journal and worked in the IU Student Legal Services office. He has written more than ten book chapters, and his law review articles have appeared in the American Criminal Law Review, the Arkansas Law Review, the Northeastern University Law Review, the Montana Law Review, the Santa Clara Law Review, and elsewhere. His books—among them, Writing for Life: The Craft of Writing for Everyday Living (2007)—have received numerous awards.
A two-time Minnesota Book Award finalist, Professor Bessler edited Justice Stephen Breyer's Against the Death Penalty (Brookings Institution Press, 2016). That book reprints, contextualizes and annotates Justice Stephen Breyer's dissent in Glossip v. Gross, 576 U.S. 863 (2015), a case that upheld Oklahoma’s lethal injection protocol. Other recent books include The Death Penalty as Torture: From the Dark Ages to Abolition (Carolina Academic Press, 2017), a bronze medalist in the Independent Publisher Book Awards (World History category); Private Prosecution in America: Its Origins, History, and Unconstitutionality in the Twenty-First Century (Carolina Academic Press, 2022), the bronze medal winner in the Independent Publisher Book Awards (U.S. History category); and The Death Penalty’s Denial of Fundamental Human Rights: International Law, State Practice, and the Emerging Abolitionist Norm (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023).
Selected Publications
Books and Book Chapters
“What Ifs and Missed Opportunities: The U.S. Supreme Court, Death Sentences and Executions, and the 50th Anniversary of Furman v. Georgia,” in Death Penalty in Decline?: The Fight Against Capital Punishment in the Decades Since Furman v. Georgia (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, Austin Sarat, ed.) (forthcoming 2024)
“Conflicted Justices and a Divided Court: The U.S. Supreme Court’s Death Penalty Jurisprudence,” in The Death Penalty: A Postmortem (NYU Press, Todd Peppers & Jamie Almallen, eds.) (forthcoming)
The Death Penalty’s Denial of Fundamental Human Rights: International Law, State Practice, and the Emerging Abolitionist Norm (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023)
“The Philosophy of Punishment and the Arc of Penal Reform: From Ancient Lawgivers to the Renaissance and the Enlightenment and through the Nineteenth Century,” in The Palgrave Handbook on the Philosophy of Punishment (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, Matthew Altman, ed. 2023)
Private Prosecution in America: Its Origins, History, and Unconstitutionality in the Twenty-First Century (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2022)
“A Tandem Bicycle: The Rule of Law and the Protection of Human Rights,” in Barbara Faedda, ed., Rule of Law: Cases, Strategies, and Interpretations (Vicenza: Ronzani Editore Srl, 2021)
"From the Founding to the Present: An Overview of Legal Thought and the Eighth Amendment's Evolution," in Meghan Ryan & William W. Berry III eds., The Eighth Amendment and Its Future in a New Age of Punishment (Cambridge University Press, 2020)
The Baron and the Marquis: Liberty, Tyranny, and the Enlightenment Maxim that Can Remake American Criminal Justice (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2019)
The Celebrated Marquis: An Italian Noble and the Making of the Modern World (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2018)
The Death Penalty as Torture: From the Dark Ages to Abolition (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2017)
“The American Death Penalty: A Short (But Long) History,” in Robert M. Bohm & Gavin Lee, eds., Routledge Handbook on Capital Punishment (New York: Routledge, 2017)
Justice Stephen Breyer, Against the Death Penalty (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2016) (editor; released in paperback in 2023)"Capital Punishment Law and Practices: History, Trends, and Developments," in James R. Acker, Robert M. Bohm & Charles S. Lanier, eds., America's Experiment with Capital Punishment: Reflections on the Past, Present, and Future of the Ultimate Penal Sanction (3rd ed. 2014).
"The American Enlightenment: Eliminating Capital Punishment in the United States," in Capital Punishment: A Hazard to a Sustainable Criminal Justice System? (Lill Scherdin, ed., 2014).
The Birth of American Law: An Italian Philosopher and the American Revolution (Durham, N.C. Carolina Academic Press, 2014).
Cruel and Unusual: The American Death Penalty and the Founders' Eighth Amendment (Boston: Northeastern University Press) (released in paperback in 2013).
Cruel and Unusual: The American Death Penalty and the Founders' Eighth Amendment (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2012).
Writing for Life: The Craft of Writing for Everyday Living (Minneapolis: Bottlecap Books, 2007).
Kiss of Death: America's Love Affair with the Death Penalty (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2003).
Legacy of Violence: Lynch Mobs and Executions in Minnesota (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003).
Death in the Dark: Midnight Executions in America (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1997).
Reviews of John Bessler's books
Articles and Essays
The Gross Injustices of Capital Punishment: A Torturous Practice and Justice Thurgood Marshall’s Astute
Appraisal of the Death Penalty’s Cruelty, Discriminatory Use, and Unconstitutionality, 29 Wash. & Lee J. Civ. Rts. & Soc. Just. 65 (2023)
The Rule of Law: A Necessary Pillar of Free and Democratic Societies for Protecting Human Rights , 61 Santa Clara L. Rev. 467 (2021)
A Century in the Making: The Glorious Revolution, the American Revolution, and the Origins of the U.S. Constitution's Eighth Amendment, 27 Wm. & Mary Bill of Rts L.J. 989 (2019)
The Marquis Beccaria: An Italian Penal Reformer's Meteoric Rise in the British Isles in the Transatlantic Republic of Letters, 4 Diciottesimo secolo 107 (2019)
Response, Bucklew v. Precythe: The Supreme Court's Tortured Death Penalty Jurisprudence , Geo. Wash. L. Rev. On the Docket (Apr. 17, 2019)
Taking Psychological Torture Seriously: The Torturous Nature of Credible Death Threats and the Collateral Consequences for Capital Punishment, 11 Ne. U. L. Rev. 1 (2019)
Torture and Trauma: Why the Death Penalty Is Wrong and Should Be Strictly Prohibited by American and International Law, 58 Washburn L.J. 1 (2019)
The Abolitionist Movement Comes of Age: From Capital Punishment as a Lawful Sanction to a Peremptory, International Law Norm Barring Executions, 79 Mont. L. Rev. 7 (2018)
The Long March Toward Abolition: From the Enlightenment to the United Nations and the Death Penalty's Slow Demise, 29 U. Fla. J.L. & Pub. Pol'y 1 (2018)
The Concept of “Unusual Punishments” in Anglo-American Law: The Death Penalty as Arbitrary, Discriminatory, and Cruel and Unusual, 13 Nw. J. L. & Soc. Pol’y 307 (2018)
What I Think About When I Think About the Death Penalty, 62 St. Louis U. L.J. 781 (2018)
The Law’s Evolution: From Medieval Executions to a Peremptory, International Law Norm Against Capital Punishment, 3 Beccaria: Revue d’histoire du droit de punir 255 (2017)
The Italian Enlightenment and the American Revolution: Cesare Beccaria's Forgotten Influence on American Law Mitchell Hamline Law Journal of Public Policy and Practice: Vol. 37: Iss. 1, Article 1 (2016)
The Inequality of America's Death Penalty: A Crossroads for Capital Punishment at the Intersection of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments , 73 Wash & Lee L. Rev. Online 487 (2016).
The Economist and the Enlightenment: How Cesare Beccaria Changed Western Civilization , 42 Eur. J. Law & Econ. 1 (2016).
Foreword: The Death Penalty in Decline: From Colonial America to the Present , 50 Crim. L. Bull. 245 (2014).
The Anomaly of Executions: The Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause in the 21st Century , 2 Brit. J. Am. Legal Stud. 297 (2013).
Tinkering Around the Edges: The Supreme Court's Death Penalty Jurisprudence , 49 Am. Crim. L. Rev. 1913 (2012).
Revisiting Beccaria's Vision: The Enlightenment, America's Death Penalty, and the Abolition Movement , 4 Nw. J. L. & Soc. Pol'y 196 (2009).
In the Spirit of Ubuntu: Enforcing the Rights of Orphans and Vulnerable Children Affected by HIV/AIDS in South Africa , 31 Hast. Int’l & Comp. L. Rev. 33 (2008).
The Botched Hanging of William Williams: How Too Much Rope and Minnesota’s Newspapers Brought an End to the Death Penalty in Minnesota , The Rake (Mar. 2004).
Injustice Casts Shadow on History of State Executions , StarTribune, Dec. 7, 2003.
America’s Death Penalty: Just Another Form of Violence , 82 Phi Kappa Phi Forum 13 (Winter 2002).
The “Midnight Assassination Law” and Minnesota’s Anti-Death Penalty Mov ement, 1849-1911 , 22 Wm. Mitchell L. Rev. 577 (1996).
The Public Interest and the Unconstitutionality of Private Prosecutors , 47 Ark. L. Rev. 511 (1994).
Televised Executions and the Constitution: Recognizing a First Amendment Right of Access to State Executions , 45 Fed. Comm. L.J. 355 (1993).
Defining “Co-Party” Within Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 13(g): Are Cross-Claims Between Original Defendants and Third-Party Defendants Allowable?, 66 Ind. L.J. 549 (1991).