Professor John Bessler is a distinguished legal scholar at the University of Baltimore School of Law, recognized for his extensive expertise in various areas of law, particularly capital punishment, human rights, and administrative law. With over 30 years of legal experience, John Bessler has built a remarkable career as an educator, author, and legal practitioner.
You can reach Professor Bessler at [email protected] or by phone at 410.837.4690. He is located in Room 1106 of the John and Frances Angelos Law Center. For administrative assistance, please contact Tiffany Ralph at [email protected] or 410.837.4561, Room 1112, John and Frances Angelos Law Center.
Academic Career and Expertise
John Bessler’s academic journey is marked by diverse and prestigious institutions. He holds degrees from the University of Oxford (M.ST.), Hamline University (M.F.A.), Indiana University Maurer School of Law (J.D.), and the University of Minnesota (B.A.). His comprehensive curriculum vitae is available for review, detailing his extensive accomplishments.
Professor Bessler’s areas of legal expertise are broad and deep, encompassing:
- Administrative Law
- Antitrust Law
- Capital Punishment
- Civil Procedure
- Contracts
- Human Rights Law
- Lawyering Skills
- Legal Writing
- Torts
He has been a faculty member at the University of Baltimore School of Law since 2009. Beyond Baltimore, John Bessler has shared his knowledge and experience at numerous esteemed institutions, including the University of Minnesota Law School, George Washington University Law School, Georgetown University Law Center, Rutgers School of Law, the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, and the University of Trento in Italy. His dedication to legal education is evident in his long and varied teaching career.
Professional Experience and Recognition
Before entering academia full-time, John Bessler gained significant practical legal experience. He began his career as an associate at Faegre & Benson, LLP (now Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath LLP) in Minneapolis. He then served as a clerk for U.S. Magistrate Judge John M. “Jack” Mason in the District of Minnesota from 1996 to 1998. His career progressed to partnerships at Kelly & Berens, P.A., and Of Counsel roles at Berens & Miller, P.A., in Minneapolis. Currently, he is Of Counsel at Stinson LLP, a national law firm, further demonstrating his continued engagement with legal practice alongside his academic pursuits.
At the University of Baltimore School of Law, John Bessler is not only a professor but also the faculty advisor for the moot court program. He previously served as the Region III Director for the National Moot Court Competition from 2015 to 2017. Adding to his affiliations, he has been an adjunct professor at Georgetown University Law Center since 2010.
His scholarly contributions have been widely recognized. In 2018, John Bessler received the prestigious University System of Maryland Board of Regents’ Faculty Award for Research, Scholarship and Creative Activity. He was also a visiting scholar/research fellow at the University of Minnesota Law School’s Human Rights Center in 2018 and again in 2024-2025. In December 2024, he was elected to the American Law Institute, a testament to his standing in the legal community.
Legal Scholarship and Publications
John Bessler is a prolific author and editor, having written or edited 12 books. Many of his works focus on capital punishment, while others explore the foundations of American law. His book, The Celebrated Marquis: An Italian Noble and the Making of the Modern World, a biography of Cesare Beccaria, the pioneering Enlightenment thinker against the death penalty, received significant acclaim. He has further explored Beccaria and Enlightenment themes in The Baron and the Marquis: Liberty, Tyranny, and the Enlightenment Maxim That Can Remake American Criminal Justice and The Birth of American Law: An Italian Philosopher and the American Revolution.
The Birth of American Law garnered the 2015 Scribes Book Award from The American Society of Legal Writers, the First Prize in the American Association for Italian Studies Book Award, and the Gold Winner in the IndieFab Book Award for history. The Celebrated Marquis won the 2018 Next Generation Indie Book Award for biography and was a finalist in four other book award competitions. His scholarship makes a significant contribution to legal history and contemporary legal debates.
Professor Bessler’s educational background includes a political science degree from the University of Minnesota, an M.F.A. in Writing from Hamline University, and a master’s degree in international human rights law from Oxford University, in addition to his J.D. from Indiana University Maurer School of Law. He was the Senior Managing Editor of the Indiana Law Journal. He has also contributed chapters to books published by NYU Press, Temple University Press, and Cambridge University Press, and his articles have appeared in numerous law reviews, including the American Criminal Law Review, Arkansas Law Review, and Minnesota Journal of International Law.
He edited Justice Stephen Breyer’s Against the Death Penalty, and his earlier book, Writing for Life: The Craft of Writing for Everyday Living, also received multiple awards. His recent books include The Death Penalty as Torture: From the Dark Ages to Abolition, Private Prosecution in America: Its Origins, History, and Unconstitutionality in the Twenty-First Century, and The Death Penalty’s Denial of Fundamental Human Rights: International Law, State Practice, and the Emerging Abolitionist Norm.
Selected Publications
Books and Book Chapters
- “Conflicted Justices and a Divided Court: The U.S. Supreme Court’s Death Penalty Jurisprudence,” in The Slow Death of the Death Penalty: Toward a Postmortem (forthcoming July 2025)
- “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 (forthcoming 2024)
- 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 (2023)
- Private Prosecution in America: Its Origins, History, and Unconstitutionality in the Twenty-First Century (Carolina Academic Press, 2022)
- “A Tandem Bicycle: The Rule of Law and the Protection of Human Rights,” in Rule of Law: Cases, Strategies, and Interpretations (2021)
- “From the Founding to the Present: An Overview of Legal Thought and the Eighth Amendment’s Evolution,” in The Eighth Amendment and Its Future in a New Age of Punishment (2020)
- The Baron and the Marquis: Liberty, Tyranny, and the Enlightenment Maxim that Can Remake American Criminal Justice (Carolina Academic Press, 2019)
- The Celebrated Marquis: An Italian Noble and the Making of the Modern World (Carolina Academic Press, 2018)
- The Death Penalty as Torture: From the Dark Ages to Abolition (Carolina Academic Press, 2017)
- “The American Death Penalty: A Short (But Long) History,” in Routledge Handbook on Capital Punishment (2017)
- Justice Stephen Breyer, Against the Death Penalty (Brookings Institution Press, 2016) (editor)
- “Capital Punishment Law and Practices: History, Trends, and Developments,” in 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* (2014).
- The Birth of American Law: An Italian Philosopher and the American Revolution (Carolina Academic Press, 2014).
- Cruel and Unusual: The American Death Penalty and the Founders’ Eighth Amendment (Northeastern University Press) (2012).
- Writing for Life: The Craft of Writing for Everyday Living (Bottlecap Books, 2007).
- Kiss of Death: America’s Love Affair with the Death Penalty (Northeastern University Press, 2003).
- Legacy of Violence: Lynch Mobs and Executions in Minnesota (University of Minnesota Press, 2003).
- Death in the Dark: Midnight Executions in America (Northeastern University Press, 1997).
Articles and Essays
- International Abolitionist Advocacy: The Rise of Global Networks to Advance Human Rights and the Promise of the Worldwide Campaign to Abolish Capital Punishment (forthcoming in The Minnesota Journal of International Law)
- Mr. Antitrust: A Celebration of Professor Robert Lande’s Career, 53 U. Balt. L. Rev. 1 (2024)
- 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 Movement, 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).
