Daniel Epps

Professor Daniel Epps teaches first-year criminal law, upper-level courses in criminal procedure, and a seminar on public law theory. His research lies at the intersection of constitutional law and theory, criminal law and procedure, and federal courts. His scholarship has appeared or will appear in the Harvard Law Review, the Yale Law Journal, the Michigan Law Review, the NYU Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, the Southern California Law Review, and the Vanderbilt Law Review, and his writing for popular audiences has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Vox, The Atlantic, and the Washington Monthly.

Professor Epps is a nationally recognized expert on the Supreme Court who is regularly quoted in the media. He has particular expertise in Supreme Court reform, where his work is influencing major policy debates. After Presidential candidate Mayor Pete Buttigieg endorsed his and Ganesh Sitaraman’s proposal to restructure the Supreme Court, the plan received widespread discussion in the popular press. An experienced Supreme Court litigator, Professor Epps’s notable practice experience includes serving as co-counsel for the defendant in Ocasio v. United States, which addressed the scope of criminal conspiracy liability for public-sector extortion; the successful petition for certiorari and merits briefing in Walden v. Fiore; a brief for the Court-appointed amicus curiae in Millbrook v. United States; and an amicus brief for criminal law and procedure scholars in United States v. Davila. He also served as co-counsel on the brief of Prof. Stephen E. Sachs as amicus curiae in Atlantic Marine Construction Co. v. U.S. District Court (with Jeffrey S. Bucholtz & Stephen E. Sachs), which The Green Bag Almanac & Reader included on its list of “Exemplary Legal Writing” for 2013.

Professor Epps received his A.B. summa cum laude with highest distinction in Philosophy from Duke University and his J.D. magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, where he was Articles Co-Chair of the Harvard Law Review and won the John M. Olin Law & Economics prize. After law school, he clerked for Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and for Justice Anthony M. Kennedy of the Supreme Court of the United States. He then spent several years as an appellate specialist at King & Spalding LLP in Washington, D.C. While in practice, he also co-taught  Supreme Court Decisionmaking at the University of Virginia School of Law. Immediately prior to joining Washington University Law, he was a Climenko Fellow and Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School.