Professor McAdams is the Bernard D. Meltzer Professor of Law. He writes on criminal law and procedure, social norms, the expressive function of law, inequality, and law and literature. He is the author of The Expressive Powers of Law (Harvard University Press 2015) and co-editor of Fairness in Law and Economics (Edward Elgar 2013). He has served as a member of the National Science Foundation Advisory Panel for Law & Social Sciences, the editorial board of the Annual Review of Law and Social Science, and the Board of Directors of the American Law and Economics Association.
Before joining the Law School in 2007, McAdams taught on the law faculties at the University of Illinois, Boston University, and IIT Chicago-Kent. He was a visiting professor at the University of Virginia School of Law and Yale Law School and a visiting fellow at Australian National University. McAdams received his BA from the University of North Carolina and his JD from the University of Virginia. After graduation, he clerked for Chief Judge Harrison L. Winter of the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and spent three years as an associate with Morgan, Lewis & Bockius in Philadelphia. McAdams teaches primarily in the areas of criminal law and procedure.