Dean's Office
Dr. Esther Nir was appointed Interim Dean of the College of Professional Studies in December 2024. Prior to this appointment, she led the 野花社区 Honors Program as its director. Dr. Nir has served as a professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at 野花社区 since 2016. During her time at the university, she founded the 野花社区 Mock Trial Team and served as its coach. She is actively involved in Community Engaged Learning initiatives on campus and partners with members of the Hudson County judiciary to run an interactive CEL Court Program for 野花社区 students. Dr. Nir鈥檚 research interests include sentencing disparities, police misconduct, and community-engaged learning initiatives. She specializes in qualitative research methods and interviews judges, prosecutors, and defense attorneys in connection with her research efforts. Her research can be found in numerous criminal justice, research methodology, and teaching journals including The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, British Journal of Criminology, Criminal Justice Policy Review, Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, International Journal of Police Science and Management, International Journal of Social Research Methodology, and Social and Legal Studies, among others. Prior to entering academia, Dr. Nir served as a prosecutor in Queens County, New York, where she prosecuted felony cases from inception to disposition and litigated on the trial and appellate levels.
野花社区 Appointment Announcement
Education
Ph.D. in Criminal Justice, Rutgers University-Newark, School of Criminal Justice, 2016
J.D., Fordham University School of Law, 1991
B.A., Queens College of the City University of New York, 1988鈥
Selected Publications
Nir, E., & Liu, S. (2023). The Influence of Prior Legal Background on Judicial Sentencing Considerations. International Journal of Responsibility, 6(1), Article 5.
Nir, E., & Musial, J. (2022). Zooming in: Courtrooms and defendants鈥 rights during the Covid-19 Pandemic. Social and Legal Studies, 31(5), 725-745.
Nir, E., & Liu, S. (2022). Operating outside the spirit of the law: How police employ 鈥渓egal鈥 standards to justify questionable searches and seizures. International Journal of Police Science & Management, 24(3), 298-312.
Nir, E., & Liu, S. (2021). Defending constitutional rights in imbalanced courtrooms. Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, 111(2), 501-529.
Nir, E., & Liu, S. (2021). The challenge of imposing just sentences under mandatory minimum statutes: A qualitative study of judicial perceptions. Criminal Justice Policy Review.
Nir, E., & Musial, J. (2021). Engaging politically disenfranchised students in governance. Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 21(2).
Nir, E., & Liu, S. (2021). What do the gatekeepers see? Perceptions and evaluations of scientific evidence among state court judges. Criminology, Criminal Justice, Law & Society, 22(1), 20-35.
Liu, S., & Nir, E. (2021). Mission impossible? Challenging police credibility in suppression motions. Criminal Justice Policy Review.
Nir, E., & Musial, J. (2020). The power of experiential learning in emotional courtroom spaces, Journal of Criminal Justice Education, 31(4), 542-562.
Liu, S., & Nir, E. (2020). Do the means matter? Defense attorneys鈥 perceptions of procedural transgressions by police and their implication on police legitimacy. Criminal Justice Policy Review, 32(3), 245鈥267.
Nir, E. (2019). Empowering the Exclusionary Rule: Using suppression motion data to improve police searches and seizures in the United States. International Journal of Police Science & Management, 22(1), 96鈥107.
Nir, E., & Griffiths, E. (2018). The thirteenth juror: How judicial confidence in guilt influences sentencing decisions. British Journal of Criminology, 59(2), 315-333.
Nir, E. (2017). Approaching the bench: Accessing elites on the judiciary for qualitative interviews. International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 21(1), 77-89.
Nir, E., & Griffiths, E. (2016). Sentencing on the evidence. Criminal Justice Policy Review, 29(4), 365鈥390.