Biography.
Adam Benforado is a professor, writer, and lawyer.
As a legal scholar and teacher, Adam’s main focus is on criminal justice and children’s rights. He is particularly interested in bringing insights from the mind sciences—most notably cognitive psychology—to law and legal theory.
Conducting novel experiments and developing existing findings, his research is dedicated to uncovering how our legal system may reflect unappreciated aspects of our cognitive frameworks and processes, and, as a consequence, how the law may fail to align with our purported values and fall short of meeting our needs.
As an undergraduate, Adam studied at Yale University and Oxford University. He received his J.D. from Harvard Law School and was a Frank Knox Fellow and Visiting Scholar with the Cambridge University Faculty of Law. He clerked for Judge Judith Rogers on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Adam also worked at Jenner & Block, LLP in Washington, D.C., where he handled trial and appellate litigation matters. He joined the Drexel University Kline School of Law as an assistant professor in 2008 and was granted tenure in 2013. He was a visiting professor at Brooklyn Law School in Spring 2013.
Adam has published numerous scholarly articles and book chapters, and his op-eds and essays have appeared in a variety of publications including The New York Times, Washington Post, Atlantic, Time, Rolling Stone, Chronicle of Higher Education, American Scholar, and Boston Review.
His first book, Unfair: The New Science of Criminal Injustice (Crown), was a New York Times bestseller, a #1 Audible.com bestseller, and the recipient of a variety of awards and honors: 2017 American Psychology-Law Society Book Award, 2016 Science in Society Journalism Awards Honorable Mention, Green Bag Exemplary Legal Writing Honoree, 20th Annual Books for a Better Life Awards Finalist, and Media for a Just Society Awards Finalist.
Adam’s latest book, A Minor Revolution: How Prioritizing Kids Benefits Us All (Crown), has drawn strong praise from inside and outside academia. Harvard Kennedy School professor Robert Putnam called it “a must-read for anyone of any political persuasion who is concerned with restoring the American dream of equal opportunity and upward mobility” and lauded the book for combining “vividly written case studies with a comprehensive review of the latest scientific research to offer a simple but radical prescription for what ails America.” Emory law professor Dorothy Brown asserted that “A Minor Revolution will forever challenge the way you think about America’s treatment of her children.” And University of Florida law professor Nancy Dowd described it as a “compelling, passionate call to be serious about children’s lives.” On the public side, The Atlantic characterized A Minor Revolution as an “extremely sympathetic and worthy attempt to protect kids,” New York Magazine called it an “encyclopedically researched, surprisingly hopeful take,” and Publishers Weekly commended “this persuasive and wide-ranging study . . . [as] deeply researched and passionately argued.”
An active media voice, Adam has been interviewed by Larry King, Al Sharpton, Melissa Harris-Perry, and Scott Simon and been featured on Fresh Air. He regularly speaks to academic audiences, legal practitioners, and the public about his research.
He lives in Philadelphia with his wife and two children.