Clifford S. Fishman
Professor

fishman@law.edu

Clifford S. Fishman, a graduate of Columbia University Law School, began his professional career by serving for eight years as an assistant district attorney in the New York County District Attorney's Office and as chief investigating assistant district attorney in New York City's Special Narcotics Prosecutor's Office. During those eight years he tried dozens of jury trials; wrote and supervised the execution of more than thirty interception orders; wrote search warrants leading to the seizure of untold quantities of heroin, cocaine, and marijuana (not to mention a 200-pound bag of peat moss); and also oversaw the purchase of the most expensive kilogram of pancake mix in the history of American law enforcement.

Having cleaned up New York City's narcotics problem, in 1977 he joined the faculty of the Columbus School of Law, The Catholic University of America, where he teaches criminal law, criminal procedure and evidence. He is the author of Wiretapping and Eavesdropping (3d ed. 2007) with his co-author, Ann T. McKenna; the first five volumes of Jones on Evidence (7th ed., 1992, 1994,1998, 2000, 2003)(only two more volumes to go, or maybe three, or ......); and numerous scholarly articles about various aspects of search and seizure, electronic surveillance, and evidence.

Professor Fishman has also occasionally taken court assignments to defend indigent defendants, in which capacity he complains bitterly about prosecutors doing to him what he delighted in doing to defense attorneys when the shoe was on the other foot.

He has testified before Congressional committees on several occasions (always as an invited witness, never as a target!) most recently in July, 2002, on a proposal to amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and has consulted formally and informally with, or made presentations to, the United States Department of Justice, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Judicial Conference of the United States Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces, local prosecutors' offices, the District of Columbia Criminal Defense Attorneys' Association, the National Technical Investigators Associationlocal prosecutors' offices, the District of Columbia Criminal Defense Attorneys' Association, the National Technical Investigators Association, the National Association of Judiciary Interpreters and Translators, and pretty much anyone else who asks politely.

Professor Fishman received his bachelor's degree from the University of Rochester in 1966 and his J.D. from Columbia University Law School in 1969. He and his wife Betty are the proud parents of two adult daughters, are active members of their synagogue and have led Jewish religious services of one kind or another in Maryland, Washington, D.C., Long Island, Tennessee, West Virginia and off the coast of Alaska. Outside interests include bicycling, the Civil War (studying it, not re-fighting it) and the Baltimore Orioles. He knows what the meaning of "is" is.

BOOKS

"Pen Registers and Privacy: Risks, Expectations, and the Nullification of Congressional Intent." Catholic University Law Review 29 (Spring 1980): 557.