Sanford Kadish

Sanford "Sandy" H. Kadish (September 7, 1921 – September 5, 2014) was an American criminal law scholar and theorist. He specialised in criminology and criminal law theory, and was one of the drafters of the American Model Penal Code.

Biography Sanford Harold Kadish was born in 1921 in New York City, and grew up in the Bronx. Kadish earned his law degree from Columbia Law School in 1948; during that time he studied with professors Herb Wechsler and Walter Gellhorn, who were influential on his career and scholarship. in 1961, before he joined UC Berkeley School of Law in 1964, where he stayed until his retirement in 1999. He served as Berkeley Law's Dean from 1975 to 1982, "America's foremost scholar of the criminal law", and "the dean of American criminal law academicians".

In his scholarship and his work on legal reform, Kadish applied a sociological lens to criminal law and criminology. Kadish authored the leading criminal law casebook scholarship on excuses and exceptions in criminal law, including several articles and ultimately a formulation in his criminal law casebook that shaped the treatment of this topic in all subsequent casebooks studies of the codification of law, beginning with his contributions to the Model Penal Code his influential casebook, Criminal Law and Its Processes, which "took the field of criminal law class materials by storm, revolutionized the prevalent approach to teaching the first-year course, and projected a vision of the subject matter that deservedly dominated the field." and Vice-President of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. During the 1950s Kadish served as an arbitrator with the Regional Wage Stabilization Board (1951–53). While dean, Kadish helped institute the Jurisprudence and Social Policy Program, one of the first of its kind. Kadish co-authored some work with his brother, Mortimer Kadish, a philosopher. He was married to June Kadish (1922-2011) for 68 years, with whom he had two sons, Josh and Peter Kadish. Blame and Punishment: Essays in the Criminal Law (1987) (collection of a number of previously published pieces) M. Kadish & S. Kadish, Discretion to Disobey: A Study of Lawful Departures from Legal Rules (1973); later, M Kadish, S Kadish, MR Kadish, SH Kadish (2012)

Selected articles "Methodology and Criteria in Due Process Adjudication. A Survey and Criticism", Yale Law Journal, 1957 ("one of the top hundred most cited law review articles of all time", according to Christopher Kutz "Legal Norm and Discretion in the Police and Sentencing Process", 75 Harv. L. Rev. 904 (1962) "Some Observations on the Use of Criminal Sanctions in Enforcing Economic Regulations", The University of Chicago Law Review, 1963 "The Crisis of Overcriminalization", 374 Annals Am. Acad. Pol. & Soc. Sci. 157 (1967); 7 American Criminal Law Quarterly 17 (1968) Sanford H. Kadish, "The Decline of Innocence", 26 Cambridge L.J. 273 (1968) "Why Substantive Criminal Law: A Dialogue", 29 Clev. St. L. Rev. 1 (1980)

Bibliographies and tributes "Professor Sanford H. Kadish's Scholarship", Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law Eddie Yeghiayan, "Sanford H. Kadish Bibliography", UCHRI Bibliographies, UCI Dept. of Logic and Philosophy of Science California Law Review, v. 70, n.3 (May 1982) - Volume dedicated to Sanford Kadish, including several review and tribute articles