Previously, he served as a prosecutor in the Office of the Manhattan District Attorney, and a law professor at the UC Davis School of Law and Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles, where he taught Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure, and Constitutional Law. He also served as William and Flora Hewlett Professor of Law and Dean of the John F. Kennedy University School of Law. His scholarly writing has been published in the Yale Law Journal, Columbia Law Review, Howard Law Journal, and most recently, in the NYU Review of Law and Social Change.