Rachel Moran is an associate professor and founder of the Criminal and Juvenile Defense Clinic at the University of St. Thomas School of Law. The 2020 graduating class selected her as the law school’s Professor of the Year.

Moran focuses her scholarship on issues pertaining to police accountability, policing reform, and public access to records of police misconduct. In 2019 she was named a Bellow Scholar, a biennial national recognition for clinical professors engaged in empirical research that has significant potential to improve the quality of justice. Her articles have appeared in the UC Irvine Law Review, Washington Law Review, Cardozo Law Review, Villanova Law Review, and Buffalo Law Review, among others. Her work has also been cited in CNN, The Economist, Vox, Bloomberg News, and many other media outlets.

Moran attended law school at Chicago-Kent College of Law, where she graduated with High Honors and served on the law review. While in law school Moran won numerous advocacy competitions and best advocate awards, including the national championship of the National Moot Court Competition, and was honored with the American College of Trial Lawyers Fulton Haight Award given to the national best appellate advocate. After law school Moran worked at a private criminal defense firm, representing clients on trial for offenses ranging from misdemeanors to first-degree murder. She then became an assistant appellate defender with the Office of the Illinois State Appellate Defender. In that capacity she argued numerous criminal appeals in Illinois appellate courts and the Illinois Supreme Court. Moran helped spearhead the office’s constitutional challenges to the mandatory transfer of children to criminal court, as well as the severe sentencing schemes that resulted in hundreds of children in Illinois serving life or de facto life sentences.

Before coming to University of St. Thomas, Moran taught as a Clinical Fellow at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law. Moran previously served as an adjunct professor at Chicago-Kent College of Law and coached many mock trial teams, including two national best advocates and the 2015 National Trial Competition champions.

Selected Publications

Doing Away With Disorderly Conduct, 63 Boston College L. Rev. (forthcoming 2022), https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3807607

Law Enforcement Perspectives on Public Access to Misconduct Records, 42 Cardozo L. Rev. (forthcoming 2021), https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3552012

Police Privacy, 10 UC Irvine L. Rev. 153 (2019)

Contesting Police Credibility, 93 Wash. L. Rev. 1339 (2018)

In Police We Trust, 62 Vill. L. Rev. 953 (2017)

Ending the Internal Affairs Farce, 64 Buff. L. Rev. 837 (2016)