DIANE E. COURSELLE

PROFESSOR OF LAW

  AND DIRECTOR OF DEFENDER AID PROGRAM

Office: 110 College of Law Building
Telephone: 307-766-3118
Email address: dcoursel@uwyo.edu

Diane Courselle joined the faculty as a Visiting Assistant Professor and Director of the Defender Aid Program in July 1998, and was then hired as a regular member of the faculty. She is currently an Associate Professor of Law and Director of the Defender Aid Program.

After graduating from law school in 1991, Prof. Courselle clerked for Judge Henry A. Mentz of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana, and then for Judge Henry A. Politz of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. She then served as an attorney with the Office of the Appellate Defender in New York City. She has also been a visiting assistant professor at the Loyola College of Law in New Orleans.

Courselle’s primary areas of teaching and scholarship are criminal law and procedure. She directs the College of Law’s Defender Aid Program, a clinical program in which third-year law students represent indigent defendants in criminal appeals and other post-conviction matters. She also teaches a seminar on Gender and the Law, and has previously taught Property and Legal Writing.

Courselle’s recent publications include “Suspects, Defendants, and Offenders with Mental Retardation in Wyoming,” in the Wyoming Law Review (2001), and she is currently working on articles related to jury reform and capital punishment. She has been a frequent presenter in CLE programs and national conferences on such subjects as military tribunals, effective oral argument, and practice in rural communities.

Education

B.A., Fordham University (1987), cum laude.

J.D., Loyola University School of Law (1991), magna cum laude.

Recent Publications

McGeorge Law Review Symposium, Sentencing Guideline Law & Practice Post-Booker, presentation, March 10, 2006:  Slouching Toward Booker and Beyond—The Court Embraces and Rejects the Role of Juries at Sentencing (article forthcoming).

When Clinics are “Necessities Not Luxuries”: Special Challenges of Running a Criminal Appeals Clinic in a Rural State, 75 Mississippi L. J. 721 (2006).

Suspects, Defendants, and Offenders with Mental Retardation in Wyoming, Wyoming Law Review (2001)

Recent Presentations

CLE Presentation on Current issues in Criminal Law (with Theodore Lauer and Eric Johnson), University of Wyoming College of Law, Laramie, Wyoming, October 15, 2005.