Thomas P. Crocker

Assistant Professor of Law

Contact Information Room 409 USC School of Law 701 Main Street Columbia, South Carolina 29208 v 803-777-4790 Email

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Thomas Crocker joined the law faculty in the fall of 2005. He teaches Constitutional Law I & II, Criminal Procedure, and seminars in Jurisprudence and Law & Literature.

Professor Crocker graduated from Yale Law School, where he was Book Reviews Editor of the Yale Law Journal and an editor of the Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities. After graduating from law school, Professor Crocker clerked for Judge Carlos F. Lucero on the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. Prior to following his interest in law, he taught philosophy, graduating with a Ph.D. in philosophy from Vanderbilt University, and an M.A. in philosophy from the University of Wales (U.K.). He was a Visiting Assistant Professor in philosophy at St. Lawrence University, a teaching fellow in the Department of Philosophy at Vanderbilt, and a teaching assistant in the Department of Philosophy at Yale.

Professor Crocker's scholarly writings in law have appeared in the UCLA, Texas, Fordham, SMU, and American University Law Reviews, as well as in the peer-reviewed journal Law & Literature. In two recent articles, Torture, with Apologies, and Overcoming Necessity: Torture and the State of Constitutional Culture, he focuses on the problems created by the practice of torture for rights-protecting constitutional commitments as well as separation of powers principles. He criticizes consequentialist justifications for torture in supposed emergency situations, arguing that the Constitution does not invite utilitarian tradeoffs between national security and liberty. In his article, Displacing Dissent: The Role of Place in First Amendment Jurisprudence, appearing the Fordham Law Review, Professor Crocker argues that because where we speak is often just as important as what we say, increased government efforts to restrict the location of speech threaten to undermine First Amendment guarantees. He also contributes to theoretical debate over constitutional interpretation in his article, Envisioning the Constitution, which was published in the American University Law Review.

Professor Crocker’s most recent article, From Privacy to Liberty: The Fourth Amendment After Lawrence, which will appear in the UCLA Law Review, develops a framework for revising Fourth Amendment jurisprudence in light of Lawrence’s protection for interpersonal liberty. An earlier version of this article was selected for presentation at the 2009 Law & Humanities Interdisciplinary Junior Scholars Workshop held at Georgetown Law Center, and sponsored by the Columbia, Georgetown, UCLA and University of Southern California law faculties.

Professor Crocker is currently pursuing several projects, including a book project in constitutional theory provisionally entitled, The Constitution as Ethical Life. In addition to a further project related to torture and human rights, he is also working on the relation between necessity arguments and constitutional constraints regarding economic and health emergencies. He is also working on the often overlooked political purposes behind Fourth Amendment jurisprudence. Professor Crocker remains generally interested in theoretical issues at the intersection of law and philosophy.