Alexandra Natapoff

Alexandra Natapoff is an American legal scholar. Originally a federal public defender, she became a law professor at Loyola Law School, University of California, Irvine School of Law, and Harvard Law School, where she is Lee S. Kreindler Professor of Law. She obtained a BA cum laude in philosophy from Yale University and a JD with distinction from Stanford Law School. In 2017, she moved to University of California, Irvine School of Law where she was appointed Chancellor’s Professor of Law in 2019. In 2016, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in Law. Her 2018 book Punishment Without Crime addresses the impact of misdemeanor charges in the criminal justice system on inequality. She also co-edited the volumes The New Criminal Justice Thinking and America Unfinished (2026).

(ed. with Sharon Dolovich) The New Criminal Justice Thinking (2017)

Punishment Without Crime: How Our Massive Misdemeanor System Traps the Innocent and Makes America More Unequal (2018)

(ed. with Guy-Uriel Charles) America Unfinished: 250 Years of Law and Governance (2026)