LEIGH BIENEN

Leigh B. Bienen is a senior lecturer at Northwestern University School of Law and a criminal defense attorney whose areas of expertise include homicide, capital punishment, sex crimes, and rape reform legislation. She has published extensively in legal journals and taught law at the Woodrow Wilson School of Princeton University, at the University of Pennsylvania School of Law and the University of California (Berkeley) School of Law. She is licensed to practice law in Illinois, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, and D.C. and is a member of the Bar of the United States Supreme Court.

Her work has been generously supported by The Joyce Foundation, The MacArthur Foundation, The McCormick Tribune Foundation, and Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law. In 2009 she published an empirical study of the cost of capital punishment in Illinois which played a role in the abolition of the death penalty in Illinois.

Recently, she has developed a series of web based research projects: Homicide in Chicago, 1870-1930; Florence Kelley, Factory Inspector in 1890’s Chicago; Illinois Murder Indictments, 2000-2009; and a web site on Illinois State Judges (forthcoming 2016). Her 2015 books are: Florence Kelley, Factory Inspector in 1890’s Chicago, and The Children.