Respected legal scholar and Duke University law Professor Robert P. Mosteller has been chosen as the 22nd Wayne Morse Chair of Law and Politics. Mosteller will make the first in a series of public addresses at 7 p.m. today in Room 175 of the Knight Law Center.
His lecture, called “New Dimensions of Sentencing Reform in the Twenty-first Century,” goes well with the two-year focus topic for the Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics, “Race, Class and the Criminal Justice System.” This is one of the reasons the committee representing the center selected him, officials said.
“We chose Professor Mosteller because of his deep interest in criminal sentencing, victim rights and evidentiary issues in criminal justice, and particularly child abuse,” Wayne Morse Center Director Margaret Hallock said. “He is a nationally renowned expert in criminal justice and sentence policy.”
Mosteller’s speech today will focus on this core issue.
“What I’m trying to identify in the talk are some of the factors that changed over five years ago, which make (sentencing) reform more positive,” Mosteller said.
He said that these factors include falling crime rates, tight budgets and new ideas in sentencing theory.
“I am interested in sentencing because it is an important end-product of the criminal process,” Mosteller said. “This is an important time to take advantage of several factors and think about positive changes in sentencing policy.”
After a person breaks the law, there is a certain method to begin mending whatever damage has been done, he said. “There’s three elements that need to be restored when a crime is committed: the victim, the offender and the community.”
He was a law clerk on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, and during his clerkship he met his wife, who is also a law professor. He was chief of the trial division for the Washington, D.C., Public Defender Service and co-wrote a book called “McCormick on Evidence.”
Mosteller received a bachelor’s degree in history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1970, a law degree from Yale Law School in 1975 and a master’s degree in public policy at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government in 1975.
Wayne Morse Center Community Coordinator Cheri Brooks said the center picks well-known scholars like Mosteller who are usually avant-garde mavericks with strong views in their field, in the tradition of Sen. Morse himself.
Morse was one of two senators who voted against the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in 1964, a move that involved U.S. troops in the Vietnam War, Brooks said.
She added Mosteller’s experience and knowledge makes him worthy of being the Morse chair.
“Every year, it’s a prominent scholar in the U.S.,” she said.
Mosteller is taking the semester off from his professorship at Duke to teach a two-week seminar at the University School of Law. In addition to today’s talk, he is also scheduled to speak in Room 175 at the Knight Law Center at 5 p.m. Nov. 5, and from noon to 5 p.m. Jan. 10.