Stephen E. Henderson

  • Judge Haskell A. Holloman Professor of Law

Education

B.S., Electrical Eng., UC Davis, 1995

J.D., Yale Law School, 1999

Research Interests

  • Criminal Law
  • Criminal Procedure
  • Privacy
  • Artificial Intelligence and Quantum Computing
  • Legal Pedagogy

About

Professor Henderson’s work broadly engages with the substantive criminal law, the regulation of policing, and our modes of criminal adjudication, including the intersections of those fields with modern technologies—he was, many moons ago, awarded the College of Engineering Medal for most outstanding graduate at the University of California, Davis. An elected member of the American Law Institute, he has done drafting work for the American Bar Association (Law Enforcement Access to Third Party Records, Reporter) and the Uniform Law Commission (Computer Crime, Co-Reporter); he co-edited The Cambridge Handbook of Surveillance Law; and he has served on various committees working with forensics, drone flight, generative AI, and police body cameras.

For over a decade, Professor Henderson wrote a great deal on privacy, big data, and the misguided Fourth Amendment third party doctrine, including developing a notion of “Fourth Amendment time machines” that was critical in the Supreme Court’s doctrinal pivot in Carpenter v. United States. While he continues that work—for example developing theories of privacy anxiety and neo-general warrants—in the past decade, he has also broadly tackled issues in pedagogy and the criminal law, including how developing technologies ought to influence both.

On the pedagogical front, Professor Henderson codes an online resource for teaching criminal law with multimedia materials, and he has developed first-of-their-kind textbooks that meld traditional Socratic, case-method learning with superior pedagogy, including integrated active learning and spaced repetition: Our Constitutional Constraints: Adjudication, Our Constitutional Constraints: Policing, and The Criminal Law. On the criminal law front, he has developed novel theories such as jury veto, role-reversibility, search and seizure budgets, and trial lottery, and he continues to interrogate what artificial general intelligence—if it comes—ought to mean for our systems of criminal justice.

More generally, Professor Henderson enjoys speaking, teaching, and collaborating; he’ll sometimes publish on random topics like vigilantism because they involve folks like Daredevil, Punisher, and Zorro; and he enjoys pondering everything from 80s music to the writing of Robertson Davies to the philosophy of world religions. When he’s not doing any of this, he’s likely spending time with his soulmate, Hilary, and/or their five kids. While the kids’ band Sheep Without Rights might be on permanent hiatus, its spirit will always live on.

Additional Information

Books

Our Constitutional Constraints: Adjudication (First edition 2020, Current 2021).

Our Constitutional Constraints: Policing (First edition 2018, Current 2022).

The Criminal Law (First Edition 2019, Current 2022).

The Cambridge Handbook of Surveillance Law (2017) (with David Gray).

Articles

A Wolf in Sheep’s Attire: How Consent Enfeebles Our Fourth Amendment (forthcoming) (with Guha Krishnamurthi).

Role-Reversibility, AI, and Equitable Justice — Or: Why Mercy Cannot Be Automated, 114 J. Crim. L. & Criminology Online 1 (2023) (with Kiel Brennan-Marquez).

Search and Seizure Budgets, 13 U.C. Irvine L. Rev. 389 (2023) (with Kiel Brennan-Marquez).

In Celebration of Dissents (And Lengthy Textbooks): How Digital Became Different for the Fourth Amendment And Why It Is Time for a Real Warrant Default, 83 Ohio St. L. J. 913 (2022).

The Jury Veto, 40 Yale L. & Pol'y Rev. 488 (2022).

Behind Bartkus: A Flamboyant Lawyer, a Vindictive Judge, and the Untold Story of Double Jeopardy's Dual Sovereignty, 24 New Crim. L. Rev. 498 (2021) (with Dean A. Strang).

Seeing Those We’ve Rendered Invisible — A Clarion Call for Criminal Justice, 18 Ohio St. J. Crim. L. 709 (2021) (with Jordan E. Thomas).

The Trial Lottery, 56 Wake Forest L. Rev. 1 (2021) (with Kiel Brennan-Marquez and Darryl Brown).

Double Jeopardy’s Dual Sovereignty: A Tragic (and Implausible) Lack of Humility, 18 Ohio St. J. Crim. L. 365 (2020) (with Dean A. Strang).

Should Robots Prosecute and Defend?, 72 Okla. L. Rev. 1 (2019).

Artificial Intelligence and Role-Reversible Judgment, 109 J. Crim. L. & Criminology 137 (2019) (with Kiel Brennan-Marquez). 

A Few Criminal Justice Big Data Rules, 15 Ohio St. J. Crim. L. 527 (2018).

Fourth Amendment Anxiety, 55 Am. Crim. L. Rev. 1 (2018) (with Kiel Brennan-Marquez).

Carpenter v. United States and the Fourth Amendment: The Best Way Forward, 26 Wm. & Mary Bill Rts. J. 495 (2017).

Daredevil: Legal (and Moral?) Vigilante, 15 Ohio St. J. Crim. L. 133 (2017).

LAWn Signs: A Fourth Amendment for Constitutional Curmudgeons, 13 Ohio St. J. Crim. L. 487 (2016) (with Andrew Ferguson).

Fourth Amendment Time Machines (And What They Might Say About Police Body Cameras), 18 U. Pa. J. Const. L. 933 (2016).

Teaching Criminal Procedure, 60 St. Louis Univ. L. J. 413 (2016) (with Joseph Thai).

A Rose By Any Other Name: Regulating Law Enforcement Bulk Metadata Collection, 94 Tex. L. Rev. See Also 28 (2016).

Regulating Drones Under the First and Fourth Amendments, 57 Wm. & Mary L. Rev. 49 (2015) (with Marc Jonathan Blitz, James Grimsley, & Joseph Thai).

Reforming the Grand Jury to Protect Privacy in Third Party Records, 64 Am. U. L. Rev. 195 (2014) (with & Andrew E. Taslitz).

A Dedication to Andrew E. Taslitz: "It's All About the Egyptians," and Maybe Tinkerbell Too, 66 Okla. L. Rev. 693 (2014).

Our Records Panopticon and the American Bar Association Standards for Criminal Justice, 66 Okla. L. Rev. 699 (2014).

Crowdsourced Coursebooks, 51 Alberta L. Rev. 907 (2014) (with Joseph Thai).

Search, Seizure, and Immunity: Second-Order Normative Authority and Rights, Crim. Just. Ethics 32.2 (2013) (official reprint here) (with Kelly Sorensen).

Real-time and Historic Location Surveillance After United States v. Jones: An Administrable, Mildly Mosaic Approach, 103 J. Crim. L. & Criminology 803 (2013).

After United States v. Jones, After the Fourth Amendment Third Party Doctrine, 14 N.C. J. L. & Tech. 431 (2013).

What Alex Kozinski and the Investigation of Earl Bradley Teach About Searching and Seizing Computers and the Dangers of Inevitable Discovery, 19 Widener L. Rev. 115 (2013). 

Expectations of Privacy in Social Media, 31 Mississippi College L. Rev. 227 (2012).

The Timely Demise of the Fourth Amendment Third Party Doctrine, 96 Iowa L. Rev. Bull. 39 (2011).

“Move On” Orders as Fourth Amendment Seizures, 2008 BYU L. Rev. 1 (2008).

Beyond the (Current) Fourth Amendment: Protecting Third-Party Information, Third Parties, and the Rest of Us Too, 34 Pepp. L. Rev. 975 (2007).

Learning from All Fifty States: How to Apply the Fourth Amendment and Its State Analogs to Protect Third Party Information from Unreasonable Search, 55 Cath. U.L. Rev. 373 (2006).

Nothing New Under the Sun? A Technologically Rational Doctrine of Fourth Amendment Search, 56 Mercer L. Rev. 507 (2005).

Suing the Insecure? A Duty of Care in Cyberspace, 32 N.M. L. Rev. 11 (2002) (with Matthew E. Yarbrough).

Popular Press & Book Reviews

At War with Corruption: A Biography of Bill Price, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Oklahoma (Book Review), The Western Historical Quarterly, August 2022.

When Machines Can Be Judge, Jury, and Executioner (Book Review)Criminal Law and Criminal Justice Books, January 2022. 

Could a Robot be District Attorney?, Daily Journal, June 26, 2019.

If You Fly a Drone, so Can Police, Slate, May 26, 2016.

Fourth Amendment at Heart of Dispute Between FBI, Apple, The Oklahoman, March 19, 2016.

Praise Defenders, Not Just Prosecutors, Norman Transcript, Dec. 1, 2015.

Who Should be the 'Decider' on Keeping Our Secrets?, News J. (Wilmington) & Other Gannett Papers, Sept. 17, 2013, at A12.

The Technology of Surveillance: Will the Supreme Court's Expectations Ever Resemble Society's?, Widener Law Magazine (2007).

Standards & Task Forces

Co-Reporter, Uniform Law Commission Drafting Committee on Cybercrime

Legal Representative, Scientific & Technical Review Panel (STRP) for National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) OSAC Standard for Methodology in Bloodstain Pattern Analysis, 2022.

Legal Representative, Scientific & Technical Review Panel (STRP) for National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) OSAC Standard for Proficiency Testing in Friction Ridge Examination, 2021 – 2022. 

Alternate Member, FAA Drone Advisory Committee Subcommittee, 2016 – 2017.

Member, ABA Criminal Justice Section Task Force on Law Enforcement Body Cameras, 2015 – 2016.

Reporter, ABA Criminal Justice Standards on Law Enforcement Access to Third Party Records, 2007 – 2013.

Testimony

Honors and Awards

Elected Member, American Law Institute, 2022

Hooding at Graduation (Voted by 3Ls), 2017

Outstanding Professor (Voted by Student Body), 2016

Hooding at Graduation (Voted by 3Ls), 2016

Hooding at Graduation (Voted by 3Ls), 2015

University of Oklahoma Vice President for Research Award for Outstanding Research Impact, 2014

Outstanding Professor (Selected by SBA Leadership), 2013

Courses Taught

J.D.:

  • Assessing American Criminal Justice 6700-600
  • Criminal Law 5223
  • Criminal Procedure: Adjudication 5830
  • Criminal Procedure: Investigation 5303

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