Mission Statement
The Rutgers Journal of Law & Public Policy has become a premier forum for articulating the vital intersections between the law and public policy. Grounded in the ever-deepening awareness that interdisciplinary investigation is crucial to an understanding of both the law and our culture, the Journal provides a unique intellectual arena for encounters between law and a variety of disciplines. The journal bylaws are available here.
Advisor
Distinguished Professor Alec Walen
Alec Walen is a Distinguished Professor at Rutgers, holding a joint appointment in the School of Law and the Philosophy Department (New Brunswick). He served as Director of the Program in Criminal Justice in New Brunswick from 2019-2022.
He earned a B.A. at the University of Maryland, College Park, in 1987, a Ph.D. in Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh in 1993, and a J.D. from Harvard in 1998. After law school, he clerked for District Court Judge Nancy Gertner (1998-99), and worked as an associate for the D.C. office of what was then Mayer, Brown and Platt (1999-2000), before entering the academic track in 2000.
His academic work focuses on the philosophical foundations of moral rights, with applications in criminal law, constitutional law, national security law, bioethics, and more. He has written over 50 substantial articles, published in peer review journals, books, or law reviews, as well as numerous shorter pieces and encyclopedia entries. He served as an associate editor at Law and Philosophy from 2016-2024. He is currently an editor for the series of comparative criminal law books: Fundamental Concepts in Criminal Law and Criminal Justice (Hart Press).
His first book, The Mechanics of Claims and Permissible Killing in War, was published by Oxford University Press in 2019. In the spring and summer of 2025 he is making final revisions on his second book, Punishment, Penalty, and Incapacitation: A Dignity-Respecting Model of Targeted Restrictions of Liberty for Liberal States (Oxford University Press, forthcoming).