Dan Simon

Dan Simon is the Richard L. and Maria B. Crutcher Professor of Law and Psychology at the USC Gould School of Law, with a secondary appointment at the Department of Psychology at the University of Southern California. He specializes in the field of Law & Psychology, teaching courses in Criminal Law, Law and Psychology, and Wrongful Convictions at both the law school and the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.

His research focuses on the psychological dimensions of the criminal justice process, examining how cognitive processes affect legal decision making by police, witnesses, prosecutors, judges, and jurors. His work investigates issues such as eyewitness identification, false confessions, juror decision making, and the overall accuracy of criminal verdicts. Simon's research reveals how the criminal justice system is prone to errors due to cognitive biases and procedural flaws, showing how investigative procedures can contaminate witness testimony and how the adversarial system can distort evidence presentation.

Simon has received significant recognition for his scholarly contributions, most notably the Annual Book Award from the American Psychology-Law Society in 2015 for his book "In Doubt: The Psychology of the Criminal Justice Process," which has been translated into Korean, Chinese, and Japanese. He is currently working on a new book manuscript tentatively entitled "Lashing Out: The Psychology of Carceral State" under contract with Oxford University Press.

• Annual Book Award from the American Psychology-Law Society (2015)
• Visiting professor at Yale Law School, Harvard Law School, Columbia Law School, and Max Planck Institute
• Member of NIST Human Factors Committee (2014-2020) for forensic science reform

Simon earned an SJD from Harvard Law School, an MBA from INSEAD, and an LLB from Tel Aviv University. Before joining USC in 1999, he was faculty at the University of Haifa Law School and worked as a human rights lawyer for the Association for Civil Rights in Israel on the West Bank. His practical experience informs his scholarship on criminal justice reform, where he advocates for evidence-based improvements to investigative procedures and trial processes.