Mark G. Kelman
- James C. Gaither Professor of Law
- Vice Dean
- Room N213, Neukom Building
Expertise
- Civil Rights (all areas)
- Criminal Law
- Distributive Justice
- Inequality
- Judgment & Decision Making
- Takings
Biography
A prolific scholar whose jurisprudential interests range from law and economics to cognitive psychology, Mark G. Kelman has applied social science approaches to diverse legal fields including criminal law, taxation, administrative regulation and disability law. His most recent book, The Heuristics Debate (Oxford University Press, 2011), focuses on disputes about the fundamental nature of heuristic reasoning associated, respectively, with the heuristics and biases school and the fast and frugal heuristics school. He is especially concerned with the implications of these debates for a wide variety of issues of both legal theory and policy (ranging from questions about whether values are commensurable or the ordinary tendency to spend more willingly to rescue identifiable victims than to prevent “statistical” lives from being lost is defensible to controversies over the efficacy of distinct forms of criminal sanctions). He has also been engaged in a substantial experimental research project on moral reasoning and has begun to explore how surgeons come to recommend particular procedures when the costs and benefits of the procedures are difficult to commensurate, a project that bridges his ongoing interests in how people actually make decisions and his interests in normative philosophy. In addition to being a longtime teacher of both criminal law and property to first-year students, he has served as the academic coordinator, academic associate dean, and, currently, vice dean at the law school. Before joining the Stanford Law School faculty in 1977, Professor Kelman was the director of criminal justice projects for the Fund for the City of New York.
Education
- BA Harvard University 1972
- JD Harvard Law School 1976
Courses
Policy Practicum: Improving Bone Marrow Donation Programs
The National Bone Marrow Donation Program (NMBD) operates the “Be the Match Registry.” Individuals who register with Be the Match may be identified as potential donors of hematapoietic cells (most typically bone marrow) to patients facing life-threatening disorders such as leukemia, lymphoma, and aplastic anemia who do not have family members who are good matches to serve as donors. (Family members are appropriate for only 30% of patients needing these transplants.) The NBMD is considering whether the procedures that it uses to attract people to enroll as potential donors in the registry could be improved, and also wants to investigate the further possibility that the proportion of potential donors who actually donate cells once it is discovered that they are a match for a particular patient could be increased.
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