Dennis E. Curtis

Clinical Professor Emeritus of Law
Education

LL.B., Yale Law School, 1966

B.S., United States Naval Academy, 1955

Courses Taught
  • Comparative Sentencing Law
  • Ethics in the Practice of Law
  • Hurricane Relief Law Project
  • Lawyering Ethics Clinic
  • Sentencing
Dennis Curtis

Dennis Curtis is Clinical Professor Emeritus of Law at Yale Law School, where he developed with judges a course on sentencing, taught professional responsibility, and pioneered clinical education.

In the 1970s, he created a clinic in which faculty-supervised students worked with indigent clients to gain insights into the substantive law; illustrative was work by Yale Law students, who represented people incarcerated at Danbury Federal Correctional Institution. At U.S.C., where he taught from 1981 to 1996, students assisted federal prisoners at Terminal Island Federal Correctional Institution and state prisoners at the California Institute for Women at Frontera, California. In 1997, returning to Yale Law School, Professor Curtis developed a new clinical offering with the Connecticut agency charged with administering the lawyer disciplinary process. 

Professor Curtis’s books include Toward a Just and Effective Sentencing System: Agenda for Legislative Reform (with Pierce O’Donnell and Michael Churgin, Praeger 1979) and Representing Justice: Invention, Controversy, and Rights in City-States and Democratic Courtrooms (with Judith Resnik, Yale University Press, 2011). His essays include Educating Lawyers: Clinical Programs and the Legal Profession, Keynote Address at World Clinical Conference, Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan, September 8, 2006 (published as translated into Japanese in 2007); Grieving Criminal Defense Lawyers (with Judith Resnik), 70 Fordham Law Review 1615 (2002); and Mistretta and Metaphor, 66 Southern California Law Review 607 (1992); 

Professor Curtis has testified before congressional and judicial committees on sentencing, parole, and post-conviction remedies. From 1990 to 1995, he served as the first President of the Los Angeles City Ethics Commission, created by voters in Los Angeles and overseeing campaign finance regulations, governmental ethics, and distributing millions of dollars in matching campaign funds to eligible candidates for city elections. In 2007, Professor Curtis was appointed to serve on the New Haven Democracy Fund Board, charged with distributing public funds for political campaigns. 

He is a member of the American Law Institute and served as a consultant for law schools through the Association of American Law Schools. He chaired the AALS’s Committee on Clinical Legal Education and served as a director of the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles. 

Professor Curtis received his B.S. from the U.S. Naval Academy and his LL.B. from Yale.

Books

Representing Justice: The Rise and Fall of Adjudication as Seen From Renaissance Iconography to Twenty-First Century Courthouses (with Judith Resnik) (Yale University Press).

Toward a Just and Effective Sentencing System: Agenda for Legislative Reform (with Pierce O’Donnell and Michael Churgin).

Articles

From “Rites” to “Rights” of Audience: The Utilities and Contingencies of the Public’s Role in Court-Based Processes in Representations of Justice 195 – 236 (with Judith Resnik) (eds. Antoine Masson and Kevin O’Connor, P.I.E. – Peter Lang, 2007).

Representing Justice: From Renaissance Iconography to Twenty First Century Courts (with Judith Resnik), Henry la Barre Jayne Lecture, 151 Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 139 (2007).

Educating Lawyers: Clinical Programs and the Legal Profession, Keynote Address at World Clinical Conference, Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan, Septemeber 8, 2006 (publication forthcoming, 2007).

Teaching Billing: Metrics of Value in Law Firms and Law Schools (with Judith Resnik), 54 Stanford Law Review (2002).

Can Law Schools and Big Firms Be Friends? 74 Southern California Law Review 65, (2000).

Grieving Criminal Defense Lawyers (with Judith Resnik), 70 Fordham Law Review 1615 (2002).

Individuals within the Aggregate: Relationships, Representation and Fees (with Judith Resnik and Deborah R. Hensler), 71 NYU Law Review 296 (1996).

The Effect of Federalization on the Defense Function, 543 Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 85 (1996).

Congressional Powers and Federal Judicial Burdens, 46 Hastings Law Journal 1019 (1995).

Old Knights and New Champions: Kaye, Scholer and the Office of Thrift Supervision, and the Pursuit of the Dollar, 66 Southern California Law Review 985 (1993).

Mistretta and Metaphor, 66 Southern California Law Review 607 (1992).

The Fake Trial, 65 California Law Review 1523 (1992).

Images of Justice (with Judith Resnik), 96 Yale Law Journal 1727 (1987).

The Reform of Federal Sentencing and Parole Laws, National Prison Project Journal, Fall 1987.

“Here’s What We Do:” Some notes about Clinical Legal Education (with Stephen Wizner), 29, Cleveland State Law Review, 673 (1980).

Federal Judicial Power, Parole Guidelines, and Sentence Reform, in Prisoners’ Rights Sourcebook, Robbins, ed. (Clark Boardman, 1980).

The Federal Parole System, Prisoners’ Rights, (PLI, 1979).

Comment, Judicial Intervention in Church Property Disputes—Some Constitutional Considerations, 74 Yale Law Journal 1113 (1965).