Peter Calloway

Peter Calloway is the Visiting Associate Professor of Clinical Law and Friedman Fellow, joining the law school after five years as a public defender in San Francisco. He began there on a project he developed to target prosecutorial misconduct. As part of the project, Professor Calloway created a tool to help public defender offices track and respond to misconduct, engaged in media and public advocacy designed to bring attention to the problem and advance solutions to it, assisted trial attorneys in litigating misconduct issues in their cases, and attacked misconduct directly through state bar complaints. He then moved into the office’s trial division, representing hundreds of clients and trying a number of cases to jury verdict, and was part of the office’s policy team. Professor Calloway was a senior policy advisor to the 2020 Chesa Boudin for District Attorney campaign.

Before his time as a public defender, Professor Calloway served as a law clerk to the Honorable Todd E. Edelman on the DC Superior Court. He graduated from the University of Michigan and the University of Michigan Law School, where upon graduation he was presented with the Jane L. Mixer award for “students who have made the greatest contribution to activities designed to advance the cause of social justice.” During law school, Professor Calloway was an articles editor for the Michigan Journal of Race and Law, co-founded the student-run Racial Justice Coalition, and advocated for middle and high school students in long-term suspension and expulsion hearings.

He regularly writes and speaks on the harms produced by the criminal punishment bureaucracy. Professor Calloway's writing has appeared in The Appeal, the San Francisco Examiner, the Daily Journal, and elsewhere, and he has been interviewed in Mother Jones and on several podcasts, including The New Republic’s The Politics of Everything. He has developed and led trainings for public defenders on responding to prosecutorial misconduct in their cases. Before becoming a lawyer, Professor Calloway was a graphic designer and photo retoucher.