Elected Member

Professor Cynthia K. Lee

Washington, DC
George Washington University Law School
Education
Stanford University
University of California-Berkeley School of Law

Professor Lee teaches Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure, Adjudicatory Criminal Procedure, and Professional Responsibility at the Geroge Washington University Law School. Professor Lee graduated from Stanford University and received her JD from UC Berkeley Boalt Hall School of Law. Upon graduating from law school, she clerked for Judge Harold M. Fong, then Chief Judge for the U.S. District Court for the District of Hawaii. She then served as an associate with Cooper, White & Cooper in San Francisco, California, where she was a member of the firm's criminal defense practice group. Professor Lee started teaching at the University of San Diego School of Law, where she received the Thorsness Prize for Excellence in Teaching. In August 2001, she joined the GW Law faculty. 

Professor Lee has written numerous law journal articles and is the author or editor of four books: Criminal Procedure: Cases and Materials (West 2018) (with L. Song Richardson & Tamara Lawson); Criminal Law: Cases and Materials (West 2019) (with Angela Harris); Searches and Seizures: The Fourth Amendment, Its Constitutional History and the Contemporary Debate (Prometheus Books 2011); and Murder and the Reasonable Man: Passion and Fear in the Criminal Courtroom (NYU Press 2003). Professor Lee served as chair of the AALS Criminal Justice Section in 2008. 

A model statute regulating police use of deadly force that Professor Lee proposed in a 2018 law review article published in the University of Illinois Law Review was adopted by the DC Council and signed into law on a temporary basis as part of comprehensive police reform legislation in July 2020. Her model use of deadly force statute was also adopted by Connecticut and Virginia in 2020 and reaffirmed by the Connecticut legislature in 2021.

 
Areas of Expertise
Criminal Law
Criminal Procedure (Criminal Law)