Stephanos Bibas

Stephanos Bibas (born 1969) is a United States Circuit Judge for the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, who previously was a professor of law and criminology at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He is a noted scholar of criminal procedure with expertise in criminal charging, plea bargaining and sentencing.^[2][3] As a professor, Bibas examined how procedural rules written for jury trials have unintended consequences when cases involving jury trials are the exception, rather than the rule, with 95 percent of defendants pleading guilty. Bibas also studied the role of substantive goals such as remorse and apology in criminal procedure.

Education

Bibas holds a Juris Doctor from Yale Law School (1994) where he was a member of the Yale Law Journal,^[4] a Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts in jurisprudence from Oxford University (1991), and a Bachelor of Arts in political theory summa cum laude from Columbia University (1989).^[5]

Early life

Bibas was born in New York City and spent his summers growing up working for his father, a Greek immigrant who survived the occupation of Greece during World War II, in his family's restaurants. Starting in high school, he became involved in debate and public speaking. He graduated high school at the age of 15 and entered Columbia University.^[6] He continued to develop his debate skills through the Philolexian Society and Parliamentary debate at Columbia University and at Oxford University, where he won the 1st place speaker award in the World Debate Championships. He graduated from Columbia University at the age of 19. At Yale Law School, he joined the moot court and was awarded prizes for the best oralist and best team, and also served as a symposium editor on the Yale Law Journal.^[7]

Professional career

From 2006 to 2017, Bibas was a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He received the Robert A. Gorman Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2008. Bibas previously taught at the University of Chicago Law School and the University of Iowa College of Law and was a research fellow at Yale Law School.^[8]

Before beginning his academic career, Bibas was an Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, where he successfully prosecuted the world's leading expert in Tiffany stained glass for hiring a grave robber to steal Tiffany windows from cemeteries.^[9] Bibas also unsuccessfully prosecuted an alleged $7 theft at the VA hospital in New York.^[10]

Early in his career, Bibas worked as a litigation associate at Covington & Burling in Washington, D.C.^[8]

From 1994–1995, Bibas clerked for Judge Patrick Higginbotham of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. He also clerked for Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States Anthony Kennedy from 1997–1998.

Bibas is the 15th-most-cited law professor by the U.S. Supreme Court, U.S. courts of appeals, and state high courts^[11] as well as the 5th-most-cited professor of criminal law and procedure by law professors.^[12]

Supreme Court clinic

Bibas also directed Penn Law's Supreme Court clinic, for which he litigated a wide range of appellate cases under consideration by the United States Supreme Court. The clinic allows students to assist on real Supreme Court cases, including recruiting, strategising, researching, writing briefs, participating in moot court rehearsals, and attending oral arguments at the Court itself. The Court appointed him to brief and argue Tapia v. United States as amicus curiae.^[13] The Court praised Bibas and the clinic for doing "an exceptionally good job"^[14] on that case.

Cases argued

• Encino Motorcars, LLC v Navarro (2016)
• Bank of America v. Caulkett (2015)
• Petrella v. MGM, Inc. (2014)
• Vartelas v. Holder (2012)
• Tapia v. United States (2011)
• Turner v. Rogers (2011)

Federal judicial service

On June 19, 2017, President Trump nominated Bibas to serve as a United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, to fill the seat vacated by Judge Midge Rendell, who took senior status on July 1, 2015.^[15] On October 4, 2017, a hearing on his nomination was held before the Senate Judiciary Committee.^[16] On October 26, 2017, his nomination was reported out of committee by a 11–9 roll call vote.^[17] On November 2, 2017 his nomination was confirmed by the United States Senate by a vote of 53–43.^[18] He received his judicial commission on November 20, 2017.

Personal life

Bibas has made several donations to Republicans.^[19] He and his wife Juliana Denise Bibas, a writer, have four children.^[20][21] He has been a member of the Federalist Society since 1991.^[22]

See also

• List of law clerks of the Supreme Court of the United States

References

Selected publications

• Rebooting Justice: More Techology, Fewer Lawyers, and the Future of Law (Encounter Books 2017) ISBN 159403933X: exploring the use of technology and procedural innovation to simplify and streamline complex court procedures to create a cheaper, simpler, faster justice system to control costs.
• Supreme Court, 2011 Term—Comment: Incompetent Plea Bargaining and Extrajudicial Reforms, 126 Harv. L. Rev. 150 (2012): assessing the Supreme Court's recent plea-bargaining jurisprudence and predicting how judicial rulings will likely spur nonjudicial actors to better regulate plea bargaining.
• Machinery of Criminal Justice (Oxford Univ. Press, 2012) ISBN 9780195374681: book about how criminal justice has moved from a lay-driven public morality play to a hidden, amoral, lawyer-run, plea-bargaining assembly line; what the US has lost in its quest for efficiency; and how the nation could swing the pendulum partway back toward greater transparency and public involvement.
• Plea Bargaining Outside the Shadow of Trial (117 Harv. L. Rev.2463 (2004)): explores the agency costs, structural forces, and psychological biases that cause plea bargaining to deviate from expected trial outcomes.
• Integrating Remorse and Apology into Criminal Procedure (114 Yale L.J. 85 (2004)), coauthored with Richard Bierschbach: advocates reforming criminal procedure to encourage more remorse, apology, and reconciliation.
• Prosecutorial Regulation Versus Prosecutorial Accountability (157 U. Pa. L. Rev. 959 (2009)): explores the difficulties with external regulation of prosecutors by legislatures, judges, and bar authorities, and instead proposes ways to make head prosecutors more accountable to the public and to reform the inner workings of prosecutors' offices.

Videos

• Appearances on C-SPAN
• Penn Law Celebrates Stephanos Bibas' Confirmation to the Third Circuit (5:48 min). YouTube.com

External links

• Stephanos Bibas at the Biographical Directory of Federal Judges, a public domain publication of the Federal Judicial Center.
• Stephanos Bibas at Ballotpedia
• SSRN Author's Page
• U.S. Supreme Court appearances. Oyez.com.