Associate Professor of Law
Hamilton College
J.D., Cornell Law School
E-mail:
jjcapowski@widener.edu Phone: 717.541.3986
John J. Capowski is an Associate Professor of Law at Widener's Harrisburg campus. He is an honors graduate of Hamilton College and has his Doctor of Law from the Cornell Law School.
Following law school graduation Professor Capowski worked as an attorney with the Monroe County Legal Assistance Corporation in Rochester, New York. After his work with that federally funded Legal Services program, he returned to Cornell as a faculty member and served as the Director of Cornell's clinical program.
Professor Capowski then joined the faculty of the University Of Maryland School Of Law, where he served as an associate professor and directed the Legal Services Clinic, one of Maryland's clinical programs. He also was the first Director of Education and Training for the Maryland Office of the Attorney General, and he has served as a visiting faculty member at both the University of New Mexico and West Virginia University.
In 1994, Professor Capowski joined Widener's faculty as an associate professor. He has written in the areas of administrative law, evidence, lawyering skills, public benefits, public interest law, and fly fishing. He teaches evidence, civil procedure, comparative law, and an advanced evidence seminar. He has taught in Widener’s international programs in Geneva, Venice, and Sydney.
Professor Capowski has been active in a number of professional and civic organizations, including the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Domestic Violence and the American Bar Association's Project on Educating to End Domestic Violence: Law School Programs as Resources Against Domestic Violence. He has been a faculty member for the American Association of Law Schools Clinical Teachers Conference, a staff member of the Maryland Advisory Council on Family Legal Needs of Low Income Persons, and a member of the Executive Committees of both the Clinical Legal Education and Evidence Sections of the American Association of Law Schools.
In September of 2008, he traveled to Beijing to participate in an international symposium on evidence law that focused on the first draft Uniform Evidence Code for China and has continued to work with the committee that drafted and is revising the code.
Selected Recent Publications Articles
- Establishing Federal Criminal and Civil Evidence Codes, 61 ARK. L. REV. 218 (2008).
- Evidence Codification and Transubstantive and Bifurcated Evidence Rules, 2 EVIDENCE SCIENCE, NO. 2, 216 (2008). The Journal of the Institute of Evidence Law and Forensic Science of China University of Political Science and Law. (Translated and published in Chinese at pages 226-33).
- Evidence and the One-Liner: A Beginning Evidence Professors Exploration of Humor in the Law School Classroom, 35 ARIZ. L. J. 877 (2003).