Leo Katz

Leo Katz is the Frank Carano Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Katz joined the Penn Law faculty, coming from the University of Michigan Law School.

Leo Katz's work focuses on criminal law, and his explorations of the paradoxes of criminal law and deontological theory help facilitate a deeper understanding of philosophical and legal issues. For example, by investigating crimes of coercion and deception, economic crimes like tax evasion, and crimes without apparent victims, he tries to shed light more generally on problems of consent, the use and abuse of legal stratagems, and the nature of harm throughout the law.

Katz is the author of "Bad Acts and Guilty Minds: Conundrums of the Criminal Law" (University of Chicago Press, 1987), "Ill-Gotten Gains: Evasion, Blackmail, Fraud and Kindred Puzzles of the Law" (University of Chicago Press, 1996), and co-editor with Stephen Morse and Michael Moore of "Foundations of the Criminal Law" (Oxford University Press, 1999). He was recently awarded a Guggenheim fellowship for his on-going book project, The Perverse Logic of Law and Morality. Katz has also authored numerous articles for law journals, as well as for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, National Law Journal, and The American Lawyer.