Professor Michael J.Z. Mannheimer has a national reputation among legal scholars and jurists for his research explaining and demonstrating contemporary applications of original understandings of the United States Constitution, principally involving the Bill of Rights amendments for protections against unreasonable search and seizure, and cruel and unusual punishment. He has been recognized for his work by election to the American Law Institute, the leading organization in the United States producing scholarly works to help judges, lawyers and legislators in their thinking on clarifying, modernizing and improving the law.
His scholarship is widely published in law reviews and in book form. His law review articles have been published in the Columbia Law Review, Texas Law Review, Notre Dame Law Review, Emory Law Journal, Indiana Law Journal, and Iowa Law Review, and his book, The Fourth Amendment: Original Understandings and Modern Policing, is from the University of Michigan Press. It explores how the amendment to the U.S. Constitution could be applied in a reimagined approach to local policing. His work has been cited by United States Courts of Appeals for the Second, Sixth, Ninth, and Tenth Circuits, federal district courts in Massachusetts, Vermont and West Virginia, and the high courts of Connecticut, Montana and Vermont. His work on the use of the premeditation-deliberation formula to distinguish first- and second-degree murder was the winner of the Association of American Law Schools 2010 Criminal Justice Section Junior Scholar Paper Award.
Following graduation from law school in 1994 he was as a staff attorney with the Criminal Appeals Bureau of the Legal Aid Society in New York City, a law clerk for Judge Sidney H. Stein of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York and subsequently for Judge Robert E. Cowen of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit at Philadelphia.
From 1997 to 1999, he worked as a litigation associate at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison in New York City, where he practiced general commercial litigation and arbitration encompassing such diverse areas as antitrust, breach of contract, business torts, employment discrimination, ERISA, false advertising, product liability and civil RICO.
For five years before joining the Chase faculty in 2004, Professor Mannheimer served as appellate counsel and later senior appellate counsel at the Center for Appellate Litigation in New York City, where he represented indigent criminal defendants on appeal from their convictions and in related collateral proceedings. He has written briefs for or argued more than forty appeals in the Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court, the New York Court of Appeals and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit at New York City. He has represented clients at every level of the state and federal judiciaries, from handling sentencing proceedings, motions and hearings in the New York trial courts to filing certiorari petitions for reviews by the Supreme Court of the United States.
At Chase, he is also coordinator of the Kentucky Innocence Project, in which students investigate credible claims of wrongful convictions.
Professor Mannheimer holds a Juris Doctor from Columbia Law School of Columbia University.
The Fourth Amendment: Original Understandings and Modern Policing (forthcoming Summer 2023) (University of Michigan Press)
“Institutional Deterrence and the Exclusionary Rule” (work in progress)
Police Use of Force and the Original Meaning of “Due Process of Law,” 50 N. Ky. L. Rev. ___ (forthcoming 2023) (invited symposium submission)
Fugitives From Slavery and the Lost History of the Fourth Amendment, 25 U. Pa. J. Const. L. ___ (forthcoming 2023) SSRN
“The Impossibility Constraint in Criminal Law” (work in progress)
Fraudulently Induced Confessions, 96 Notre Dame L. Rev. 799 (2020) SSRN
“Eighth Amendment Federalism,” in The Eighth Amendment and Its Future in a New Age of Punishment (William Berry & Meghan Ryan, eds) (Cambridge U. Press 2020)
Vagueness as Impossibility, 98 Tex. L. Rev. 1049 (2020) SSRN
Three-Dimensional Dual Sovereignty: Observations on the Shortcomings of Gamble v. United States, 53 Tex. Tech. L. Rev. 67 (2020) (invited symposium submission)
The Unusual Case of Anthony Chebatoris: The “New Deal for Crime” and the Federal Death Penalty, 70 Syracuse L. Rev. 851 (2020) SSRN
Decentralizing Fourth Amendment Search Doctrine, 107 Ky. L.J. 169 (2019)
The Local-Control Model of the Fourth Amendment, 108 J. Crim. L. & Criminology 253 (2018)
The Coming Federalism Battle in the War Over the Death Penalty, 70 Ark. L. Rev. 309 (2017) (invited symposium submission)
The Two Mirandas, 43 N. KY. L. REV. 317 (2016) SSRN (invited symposium submission)
Gideon, Miranda, and the Downside of Incorporation, 12 Ohio St. J. Crim. L. 401 (2015) (invited symposium submission) SSRN
The Contingent Fourth Amendment, 64 Emory L.J. 1229 (2015) SSRN
Harmelin’s Faulty Originalism, 14 Nev. L.J. 522 (2014) SSRN
Cruel and Unusual Federal Punishments, 98 Iowa L. Rev. 69 (2012) SSRN pdf
Self-Government, the Federal Death Penalty, and the Unusual Case of Michael Jacques, 36 Vt. L. Rev. 131 (2011) (invited submission) pdf SSRN
Proportionality and Federalism: A Response to Professor Stinneford, 97 Va. L. Rev. In Brief 51 (2011) pdf
Not the Crime But the Cover-up: A Deterrence Based Rationale for the Premeditation-Deliberation Formula, 86 Ind. L.J. 879 (2011) (winner of the 2010 AALS Criminal Justice Section Junior Scholar Paper Award) pdf SSRN
The Impact of Information Overload on the Capital Jury's Ability to Assess Aggravating and Mitigating Factors, 17 Wm. & Mary Bill Rts. J. 1089 (2009) (co-authored with Katie Morgan) Hein Online
Toward a Unified Theory of Testimonial Evidence Under the Fifth and Sixth Amendments, 80 Temp. L. Rev. 1135 (2008) Hein Online SSRN
When the Federal Death Penalty Is 'Cruel and Unusual' , 74 U. Cin. L. Rev. 819 (2006) Hein Online SSRN
Ripeness of Self-Incrimination Clause Disputes, 95 J. Crim. L. & Criminology 1261 (2005) Hein Online pdf SSRN
Coerced Confessions and the Fourth Amendment, 30 Hastings Const. L.Q. 57 (2002) Hein Online pdf SSRN
Equal Protection Principles and The Establishment Clause: Equal Participation in the Community as the Central Link, 69 Temp. L. Rev. 95 (1996) Hein Online pdf
Panelist, “Perception vs. Reality: How Evolving Understandings of Technology Influence Fourth Amendment Jurisprudence,” Association of American Law Schools 2023 Annual Meeting, Criminal Justice Section, San Diego, CA, Jan. 6, 2023.
“Splitting the Exclusionary Rule,” CrimFest! 2022, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, New York, NY, July 18, 2022
“The Fourth Amendment: Original Understandings and Modern Policing,” ch. 9 and 10, Criminal Justice Roundtable, Vanderbilt Law School, Nashville, TN, Nov. 12, 2021
“Three-Dimensional Dual Sovereignty: Observations on the Shortcomings of Gamble v. United States,” Symposium on Double Jeopardy, Texas Tech Law School, Apr. 8, 2021 (remote)
Panelist, Say Her Name: A Day-Long Virtual Symposium on Breonna Taylor, Panel One: The Substantive Issues, University of Kentucky, J. David Rosenberg College of Law (via Zoom), Oct. 23, 2020
“Eighth Amendment Federalism and Modern Sentencing,” Prison Brake: Rethinking the Sentencing Status Quo, NACDL’s 2020 Presidential Summit & Sentencing Symposium, Georgetown University Law Center (via Zoom), Oct. 20, 2020
Senior Commenter, Chicagoland Junior Scholars Conference, Northern Illinois University College of Law (via Zoom), Oct. 2, 2020
“The Impossibility Constraint in Criminal Law,” NIU CrimWip Series, Northern Illinois University College of Law (via Zoom), June 18, 2020
“Fraudulently Induced Confessions"
- Federalist Society Annual Faculty Conference, Washington, DC, Jan. 4, 2020
- CrimFest! 2019, Brooklyn Law School, Brooklyn, NY, July 15, 2019
“Vagueness as Impossibility”
- University of Louisville, Brandeis School of Law, Mar. 5, 2019
- Willamette University College of Law, Feb. 11, 2019
“Saving Constructions of Vague Penal Statutes,” CrimFest! 2018, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, New York, NY, July 16, 2018
“Decentralizing Fourth Amendment Search Doctrine”
- ABA/AALS CJS Roundtable, Washington, DC, Nov. 2, 2017
- University of Kentucky College of Law, Lexington, KY, Sept. 6, 2017
- Federalist Society Faculty Conference, San Francisco, CA, Jan. 6, 2017