Tamar Birckhead is an Assistant Professor of Law at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where she teaches the Juvenile Justice Clinic and the Criminal Lawyering Process. Her research interests focus on issues related to juvenile justice policy and reform, criminal law and procedure, and indigent criminal defense. Professor Birckhead's recent scholarship has been published in the Buffalo Law Review, the North Carolina Law Review, the Washington and Lee Law Review, and Georgetown's American Criminal Law Review. Professor Birckhead's 2008 article on raising the age of juvenile court jurisdiction in North Carolina has received significant attention at both the state and national levels. The Raleigh News & Observer published an Op-Ed written by Professor Birckhead on the subject of raising the age, and she has been interviewed by radio and print reporters across the state on her findings. She has testified before the N.C. Governor's Crime Commission on the history of raising the age of juvenile court jurisdiction, and Action for Children North Carolina, the state's premier child advocacy organization, issued a press release and fact sheet on her research. In addition, The Campaign for Youth Justice, a national organization dedicated to ending the practice of trying, sentencing, and incarcerating youth under 18 in the adult criminal justice system, highlighted Professor Birckhead's research in their newsletter and interviewed her for their weekly radio program, Juvenile Justice Matters. Prior to joining the UNC School of Law faculty in 2004, Professor Birckhead taught at Suffolk University Law School in the Suffolk Defenders Program, a year-long criminal defense clinic. After clerking for the late and the Honorable Edith Fine in the Massachusetts Appeals Court, she practiced for ten years as a public defender, representing indigent criminal defendants in the Massachusetts trial and appellate courts as a staff attorney with the Committee for Public Counsel Services and in federal district court in Boston as an Assistant Federal Public Defender. Professor Birckhead has defended clients in a wide variety of criminal cases, from violent felony offenses in state court to acts of terrorism in federal court. Among her clients was Richard Reid, the attempted "Shoe Bomber" prosecuted in the First Circuit under the U.S.A. Patriot Act. Licensed to practice in North Carolina, New York and Massachusetts, Professor Birckhead has been a frequent lecturer at continuing legal education programs across the U.S. as well as a faculty member at the Trial Advocacy Workshop at Harvard Law School. She is Vice President of the Board for the North Carolina Center on Actual Innocence and has been appointed to the Executive Council of the Juvenile Justice and Children's Rights Section of the North Carolina Bar Association. She is also a member of the Advisory Board for the North Carolina Juvenile Defender as well as a member of the Criminal Defense Section and the Juvenile Defender Section of the North Carolina Academy of Trial Lawyers. Professor Birckhead received her B.A. degree in English Literature with Honors from Yale University and her J.D. with Honors from Harvard Law School, where she served as Recent Developments Editor of The Harvard Women's Law Journal.
Criminal defense
The Conviction of Lynne Stewart and the Uncertain Future of the Right to Defend, American Criminal Law Review (2006)
At the heart of the attorney-client relationship lies the ability to communicate freely and without...
Detention Hearings (with Wendy S. Wayne), Massachusetts District Court Criminal Defense Manual (2000)
Criminal Law and Procedure
Toward a Theory of Procedural Justice for Juveniles, Buffalo Law Review (2009)
Courts and legislatures have long been reluctant to make use of the data, findings, and...
North Carolina, Juvenile Court Jurisdiction, and the Resistance to Reform, North Carolina Law Review (2008)
North Carolina is the only state in the United States that treats all sixteen- and...
The Age of the Child: Interrogating Juveniles after Roper v. Simmons, Washington and Lee Law Review (2008)
With its recent decision in Roper v. Simmons, invalidating the imposition of the death penalty...
The Conviction of Lynne Stewart and the Uncertain Future of the Right to Defend, American Criminal Law Review (2006)
At the heart of the attorney-client relationship lies the ability to communicate freely and without...
Family law, doctor-patient confidentiality, privacy, law and literature
To Bedlam and Part Way Back: Anne Sexton, Her Therapy Tapes, and the Meaning of Privacy, UCLA Women's Law Journal (1992)
The poet Anne Sexton committed suicide in October, 1974, at the age of forty-five. Three...
Juveniles
Toward a Theory of Procedural Justice for Juveniles, Buffalo Law Review (2009)
Courts and legislatures have long been reluctant to make use of the data, findings, and...
North Carolina, Juvenile Court Jurisdiction, and the Resistance to Reform, North Carolina Law Review (2008)
North Carolina is the only state in the United States that treats all sixteen- and...
The Age of the Child: Interrogating Juveniles after Roper v. Simmons, Washington and Lee Law Review (2008)
With its recent decision in Roper v. Simmons, invalidating the imposition of the death penalty...
Legal History
North Carolina, Juvenile Court Jurisdiction, and the Resistance to Reform, North Carolina Law Review (2008)
North Carolina is the only state in the United States that treats all sixteen- and...
Social science research
Toward a Theory of Procedural Justice for Juveniles, Buffalo Law Review (2009)
Courts and legislatures have long been reluctant to make use of the data, findings, and...