Robinson, one of the world’s leading scholars on criminal law, joined the Penn Law faculty in spring 2003, coming from Northwestern. He served as a federal prosecutor, as counsel for the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Criminal Laws and Procedures, and as one of the original commissioners of the U.S. Sentencing Commission, where he was the lone dissenter to promulgation of what are the current federal sentencing guidelines. Among his dozen books are the standard lawyer’s reference book on criminal law defenses, an internationally known Oxford monograph on criminal law theory, a highly regarded criminal law treatise, a popular innovative case studies course book, and a groundbreaking empirical study of the conflict between criminal law rules and lay intuitions of justice.

In addition to Robinson’s many books, he has authored scholarly articles for most top law reviews, including California, University of Chicago, Columbia, Georgetown, Harvard, Northwestern, Oxford, University of Pennsylvania, Texas, Stanford, Virginia, and Yale. Robinson, who has given scholarly lectures and assisted in criminal code reform around the world, recently completed two criminal code reform projects in the United States and the first modern Islamic penal code under sponsorship of the United Nations Development Program. He also writes for general audiences, including publications in the Atlantic Monthly, Public Interest, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and Chicago Tribune, as well as popular books such as Would You Convict? and Law Without Justice.