Kate Weisburd's primary interests are in the areas of criminal investigation, adjudication, and civil rights. Professor Weisburd's research focuses on the changing dimensions of criminal procedure and punishment and how these shifts impact inequity. Her recent scholarly work has appeared or is forthcoming in the California Law Review, Virginia Law Review, Boston Law Review, Iowa Law Review, North Carolina Law Review, and the UCLA Law Review, and she has written for the Marshall Project, as well as other mainstream media. Professor Weisburd's article, "Punitive Surveillance" (Va. L. Rev.), was selected for the Privacy Papers for Policymakers Award (Future of Privacy Forum 2023); and the Reidenberg-Kerr Award for Outstanding Scholarship by a Junior Scholar (Privacy Law Scholars Conference 2021). Professor Weisburd was also the recipient of the 2023 Distinguished Faculty Service Award, GW Law’s professor of the year award selected by the graduating class.

Prior to joining GW Law, Professor Weisburd founded and directed the Youth Defender Clinic at the East Bay Community Law Center, which is part of the clinical program at UC Berkeley School of Law and the largest provider of free legal services in the county. In that role, Professor Weisburd taught and supervised law students representing young people in juvenile court and school discipline proceedings. In addition to her clinical teaching responsibilities, Professor Weisburd served as a lecturer at Berkeley Law, teaching courses on the school-to-prison pipeline. Prior to creating the Youth Defender Clinic, she was a fellow and supervising attorney in Berkeley Law's Death Penalty Clinic. In both clinics, Professor Weisburd maintained her own caseload and represented clients at trial, on appeal, and in post-conviction proceedings.

Professor Weisburd graduated from Columbia Law School, where she received the Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann Fellowship for Public Interest. Prior to attending law school, she worked as an investigator in death penalty cases at the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta, Georgia. Professor Weisburd received her BA from Brown University, where she was a Truman Scholar. She clerked for the Honorable Lawrence K. Karlton in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California.

In the News