Faculty Profile: Stephen C. Thaman

Resumé 

• Professor of Law and Co-Director, Center for International and Comparative Law, Saint Louis University
• Research Fellowship, Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Criminal Law, Freiburg, Germany
• Liaison, Central and Eastern European Law, Initiative of American Bar Association, Moscow, Russia 
• Fellow, International Research and Exchanges Board, Institute of State and Law, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia
• Senior Fellow, International Institute of Higher Studies in Criminal Sciences, Siracusa, Italy
• Under Contract with Max Planck Insitute for Comparative and International Criminal Law, Freiburg, Germany 
• Attorney Trainee, European Commission of Human Rights, Strasbourg, France
• Assistant Public Defender, Alameda County, California
• Acting Assistant State Public Defender, San Francisco, CA

An International Scholar

Stephen Thaman, a recognized expert on comparative criminal law and procedure, joined the Saint Louis University School of Law faculty in 1995. He is a consultant to former Soviet republics that are reforming their criminal procedure codes. He helped Russia draft its Code of Criminal Procedure, which recently celebrated its two-year anniversary. Currently, he is assisting Latvia, Georgia, Ukraine and Uzbekistan as those republics rewrite their criminal codes.

“In general, the republics want to go to a more adversarial system,” says Professor Thaman, who is fluent in six languages. “They want more human rights guarantees and more rights for defendants. It’s fascinating to be a part of the process.” Professor Thaman is in demand as a speaker worldwide and has lectured in 21 countries on five continents on issues in U.S. and comparative criminal law and procedures.

His interest in international and comparative law began to develop in 1987. After 12 years as an assistant public defender in Alameda County, Calif., he accepted a Fulbright Senior Professor Award at the Institute of Criminal Law and Procedure at the Free University of Berlin. Professor Thaman was also awarded a research fellowship at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Criminal Law in Germany where he broadened his knowledge of international legal traditions.

In addition to traveling extensively, Thaman is a prolific writer and voracious reader. Legal journals from Germany, Spain, England, Italy and Japan fill his shelves and briefcase. His articles have appeared overseas in several languages and in such prominent U.S. journals as the Stanford Journal of International Law, the Hastings International and Comparative Law Review and the Parker School Journal of East European Law. His present scholarship focuses on a comparative analysis of exclusionary rules, jury systems in Asia, Latin America and Europe, and a comparative perspective on the use of alternative methods of seeking criminal cases other than full-blown jury trial. Also, he and his colleagues at the School of Law are conducting a comprehensive investigation of the Missouri death penalty to determine the criteria used by prosecutors in charging capital cases.

Personal Reflections 

I impulsively decided to study law in my third year of a Ph.D. program in German literature. How could one remain holed up in the ivory tower, engaged in belles lettres, when an unjust and bloody war was raging (at that time, Vietnam)? I wanted to do something practical in society—it turned out I ended up defending the poor as a public defender. My return to academia was gradual, however. After quitting the public defender’s office and spending eight years in Europe learning about the criminal justice systems in places like Germany, Italy and Russia, I decided to return to the ivory tower to continue my investigation of foreign legal systems and apply this knowledge to criminal justice reform here and overseas. I have been fortunate to have been involved in such reform in Russia, Latvia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Japan and Indonesia.

I am very glad Saint Louis University gave me the opportunity to pursue this project. I also hope that the students who take my comparative classes agree that we can learn not only from systems similar to ours, such as the civil law systems, but also from the more exotic variety — the Talmudic, Islamic, Confucian, Hindu and Customary law systems. From every system in the wetlands of legal diversity, we can learn things that will help us to more subtly interpret our own and other modern systems.

I love teaching my students about such things, and, as they and my colleagues know, I also love leaving St. Louis to get closer to the sources of this incredible legal diversity through travel. One could derisively call it legal tourism, but I also firmly believe that we should all consider ourselves citizens of the world first, and Americans, Missourians, Californians or St. Louisans only thereafter. You can’t understand what is going on here, our repressive criminal justice system, our repetition of the mistakes of Vietnam, why we became different from the people who live in the countries today from whence our ancestors migrated, without understanding the rest of the world and broadening your perspective.

My junior year abroad in Germany 40 years ago was an intellectual and cultural jolt from which I have never recovered. I think every American student should go abroad (and if you haven’t done it yet, be sure to enroll in one of our Summer Programs in Madrid or Berlin, or our other exchanges with Ireland, Germany, France, etc.), for this will help students be better world citizens and better Americans, able to critically assess our legal, political and cultural systems and have a better idea of what is good in our country and what is not.