John D. Bessler

John Bessler is of counsel at Berens & Miller. From 1998 to 2007, he worked as a commercial litigator with Barbara Berens, the law firm’s managing partner. A former law firm partner, John renewed his association with the firm in 2016 by becoming of counsel. A 1991 cum laude graduate of Indiana University School of Law in Bloomington, John has taught as a law professor since 1998. He teaches at the University of Baltimore School of Law and the Georgetown University Law Center, and previously taught at the University of Minnesota Law School, The George Washington University Law School, and Rutgers School of Law. A two-time Minnesota Book Award finalist, John is the author of six books and has won numerous awards for his writing. His latest book, The Birth of American Law: An Italian Philosopher and the American Revolution (2014), won the Scribes Book Award – an annual award given out since 1961 by The American Society of Legal Writers “for the best work of legal scholarship published during the previous year.” John has extensive experience as a civil litigator, was the Senior Managing Editor of the Indiana Law Journal, and was a law clerk for U.S. Magistrate Judge John M. “Jack” Mason in the District of Minnesota. John has handled a wide variety of complex litigation matters and has appeared in federal and state courts and in administrative proceedings.

John is also an internationally recognized expert on capital punishment, and he has written and spoken extensively on that topic in the United States and abroad.  He was recently asked to edit and write a long introduction for a book that will reprint U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer’s recent dissent in Glossip v. Gross, 135 S. Ct. 2726 (2015), a death penalty case.  The book, titled Against the Death Penalty, will be published by Brookings Institution Press in August 2016.