Brittany Deitch

Brittany Deitch

Associate Professor

Department

  • Law School

Contact Information

Biography

Brittany Deitch joined the faculty at Capital Law in 2021. She teaches Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure, and related elective courses.Prior to joining Capital, Professor Deitch was a Visiting Assistant Professor at Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law, where she taught 1L and upper-level sections of Criminal Procedure. Professor Deitch previously served as a J.D. Case Writing Fellow at Harvard Law School, where she developed case studies covering a broad range of topics, including sanctuary cities, labor organizing, and prosecutorial discretion. In this role, she gained extensive experience in curriculum design based on proven pedagogical methods. She incorporates these teaching methods into her courses.Her research focuses on the theory and practice of punishment. Her works often engage in analysis of whether certain practices in the criminal justice system advance or undermine their purported theoretical underpinnings. She is especially interested in the intersection of criminal punishment and poverty. She has written about the ways in which parole conditions perpetuate a cycle of poverty and imprisonment, the application of death with dignity laws to prisoners serving life without parole sentences, the constitutional flaws in criminal jury selection practices, and retributivism’s conjoined twins problem. She is currently developing a body of work on “pay-to-stay” statutes. Her scholarly work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in the University of Colorado Law Review, Georgetown Law Journal Online, Alabama Law Review, and William and Mary Bill of Rights Journal, among others.
Degrees
  • J.D., with Highest Honor, University of Tulsa College of Law
  • B.A., Ursinus College
Expertise
  • Criminal Law
  • Criminal Procedure
  • Law & Punishment
Scholarship

Access Professor Deitch's SSRN here.

LAW REVIEWS

Pay to Stay Laws and Private Prisons, 28 U. Pa. J.L. & Soc. Change ___ (2025) (forthcoming).

Estate to State: Pay-to-Stay Statutes and the Problematic Seizure of Inherited Property, 95 U. Colo. L. Rev. 839 (2024).

Rehabilitation or Revolving Door: How Parole Is a Trap for Those in Poverty, 111 Geo. L.J. Online 46 (2022).

Life Without Parole as Death Without Dignity, 72 Ala. L. Rev. 327 (2020).

Retributivist Theories’ Conjoined Twins Problems, 87 U. Cin. L. Rev. 138 (2018).

The Unconstitutionality of Criminal Jury Selection, 26 Wm. & Mary Bill Rts. J. 1059 (2018).

Retributivism’s Conjoined Twins Problem, 53 Crim. L. Bull. 953 (2017) (peer-reviewed).