About the Authors
Margo Schlanger
Margo Schlanger is the Wade H. And Dores M. McCree Collegiate Professor of Law at the University of Michigan, where she has taught since 2011. After clerking for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the U.S. Supreme Court, she began her legal career as a trial attorney in the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, where she worked to remedy civil rights abuses by prison and police departments. Her scholarship about prison litigation has appeared in many leading law reviews, and is frequently cited by courts and litigants. A leading authority on civil rights issues and civil and criminal detention, she served on the Vera Institute’s blue ribbon Commission on Safety and Abuse in America’s Prisons; worked as an advisor on the development of proposed national standards implementing the Prison Rape Elimination Act, and testified before the Prison Rape Elimination Commission. She also served as the reporter for the American Bar Association’s revision of its Standards on the Treatment of Prisoners. She has served as both an independent monitor and an expert in systemic prisoners’ rights lawsuits.
David Shapiro
David M. Shapiro is the Executive Director of the Supreme Court and Appellate Program of the Roderick and Solange MacArthur Justice Center, a group dedicated to strategic representation in high-stakes civil rights appeals throughout the nation. Shapiro litigates to protect civil rights and criminal justice in the U.S. Supreme Court, the federal courts of appeals, and state supreme courts. In recent years, Shapiro has argued before the en banc Eighth and Ninth Circuits, the Illinois Supreme Court, and numerous federal appellate panels across the country, winning appeals regarding law enforcement brutality and misconduct, the Prison Litigation Reform Act, criminal procedure, First Amendment liberty, and deaths in custody. Shapiro has published extensive scholarship on civil rights, including articles in the Harvard Law Review, the Notre Dame Law Review, the George Washington Law Review, and the Columbia Human Rights Law Review.
Lynn Branham
Lynn Branham is Visiting Professor of Law at Florida State University. Her expertise centers on correctional and sentencing law and policy. She has provided training to federal judges and court staff about correctional law and the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA) at twenty-two workshops sponsored by the Federal Judicial Center.
Branham was the lead author of the 4th through the 9th edition of this casebook, which was previously titled Cases and Materials on the Law of Sentencing, Corrections, and Prisoners’ Rights. She has also written numerous articles on these subjects, and a technical-assistance manual for courts, correctional officials, and attorneys general on pro se inmate litigation. Branham has held numerous leadership positions in the American Bar Association, serving, for example, as a member of the Criminal Justice Section’s Council, Co-Executive Director of the Equal Justice Division, Chair and later Co-Chair of the Corrections Committee, Chair of the Prison Litigation Reform Act Task Force, and Chair of the Subcommittee on Effective Prison Oversight. A member of the Commission on Accreditation for Corrections for sixteen years (fourteen as the ABA’s representative), she received the American Correctional Association’s Walter Dunbar Award for her efforts to improve the ACA accreditation process.
Aaron Littman
Aaron Littman joins the casebook team with the 2026 supplement. He is Assistant Professor of Law, UCLA School of Law. He is also the founding faculty director of the law school’s prisoners’ rights clinic, which represents formerly pro se incarcerated plaintiffs before the federal courts of appeal. Littman’s scholarship focuses on the sub-constitutional law of incarceration; it has been published or is forthcoming in the Yale Law Journal, Columbia Law Review, Vanderbilt Law Review, and elsewhere. His research has been recognized with awards at the university and national level. Littman also serves as the deputy director of the UCLA Law Behind Bars Data Project. In this capacity, he has supervised the collection and analysis of mortality and morbidity data from carceral facilities across the country, served as an expert commentator for media outlets such as the New York Times and Reuters, and submitted invited testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee and the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Prior to entering academia, Littman clerked on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and in the Middle District of Alabama, and worked as a staff attorney at the Southern Center for Human Rights.