John Calvin Jeffries
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John Calvin Jeffries, Jr. (born ca. 1948) is a prominent law professor and was Dean of the University of Virginia School of Law from 2001 to 2008.
Biography
Jeffries is the David and Mary Harrison Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Virginia. He is best known for his work in Criminal Law, with his essays included in many major textbooks in the subject area. He is also a co-author of one of the foremost Criminal Law textbooks, Criminal Law with Professors Richard J. Bonnie, Anne M. Coughlin, and Peter W. Low.[1] He is also a scholar on constitutional law, federal courts, civil rights, civil procedure, First Amendment rights, and the Supreme Court. He has authored or co-authored a total of ten textbooks, primarily on Civil Rights and Criminal Law. Jeffries also wrote a biography about Justice Powell entitled Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1994). ISBN 0-8232-2110-5. He has also co-authored a book on the trial of John Hinckley.
Jeffries graduated from Yale University in 1970 and the University of Virginia School of Law in 1973. During law school, Jeffries served as editor-in-chief of the Virginia Law Review. He received the Z Award for the highest academic average and the Woods Prize for the outstanding graduate. Immediately after graduation, he became law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr. before serving in the U.S. Army as a second lieutenant for one year.
As Dean at Virginia Law, Jeffries made significant achievements in the school. Among them, he created the Law & Business Program, a curricular innovation designed to give law students the accounting and finance skills required to communicate effectively in the business world. It is among the foremost such programs in the nation and was recently highlighted in the April 17 issue of U.S. News & World Report. Jeffries also oversaw the creation of the Center for the Study of Race and Law in 2003. In 2006 the law school received close to $10 million in donations (a record for the school) and contributions from over 50% of its living alumni.[2] It was believed to have been the highest percentage of any law school alumni donation campaign in history.
In late summer of 2007 Jeffries announced he would step down in July 2008 as Dean to pursue teaching again. He spent the next academic year on sabbatical, spending the fall semester of 2008 teaching at Columbia Law School. Following his sabbatical he returned to teach at Virginia Law.
Jeffries is well regarded for his teaching: Jim Ryan, dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, has described Jeffries as "simply the best classroom teacher I've ever seen."[3]
Jeffries also lectures for Themis Bar Review, teaching Constitutional Law as applied to the Multistate Bar Exam as well as Federal Jurisdiction & Procedure.
