Michael Avery

About Professor Michael Avery

Professor Avery is a civil rights and criminal defense lawyer who came to Suffolk after three decades in practice. He has argued in the United States Supreme Court and nearly half of the federal Courts of Appeals. At Suffolk Law he was the Director of the Civil Litigation Concentration.

He is a co-author of Police Misconduct: Law and Litigation, the leading treatise in that field, co-author of Handbook of Massachusetts Evidence and the author of The Glannon Guide to Evidence. He previously taught as an adjunct professor at Yale Law School, Northeastern Law School, and Boston College Law School and was a visiting professor at Stetson Law School and Georgia State University Law School.

Professor Avery is a former president of the National Lawyers Guild (NLG), a founder and former president of the National Police Accountability Project (NPAP), and a former board member of the Society of American Law Teachers (SALT). In 2024 he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from NPAP. His biography may be found in Who’s Who in America, 2025.

Website: www.michaelavery.work

Education

BA, Yale College
LLB, Yale Law School
Exchange Graduate Student, Moscow State University, U.S.S.R.
MFA, Bennington Writing Program

Publications

Articles

“Do Black Lives Matter in the Supreme Court?”
Criminal Legal News, July, 2018

“Video: A Two-Edged Sword,”
Criminal Legal News, April, 2018

Book Review: Blood in the Water: The Attica
Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy,
by Heather Ann Thompson
National Lawyers Guild Review, Spring 2017

“Soviet Stories: Socialism and Personal Liberty,”
Louisiana Literature 34.2 (2017)

“How Conservatives Captured the Law,”
Michael Avery and Danielle McLaughlin
Chronicle Review, April 19, 2013 (cover story)

“Obstacles to Litigating Civil Claims
for Wrongful Conviction: An Overview,”
18 Boston U. Pub. Int. L.J. 439 (Spring, 2009)

“The Constitutionality of Warrantless Electronic
Surveillance of Suspected Foreign Threats
To The National Security of the United States,”
62 Miami L. Rev. 541, (Spring, 2008)

“Book Review, The Rise of The Conservative
Legal Movement, By Steven M. Teles,”
Suffolk Law Journal (Winter, 2008)

“Prejudice vs. Probative Value,
Philadelphia Style,”
50 St. Louis U. L. J. 1147 (Summer, 2006)

“Paying for Silence: The Liability of
Police Officers under Section 1983
for Suppressing Exculpatory Evidence,”
13 Temple Political and Civil Rights Law Review 1 (Fall, 2003)

“You Have a Right to Remain Silent,”
30 Fordham Urban L. J. 571 (January, 2003)

“Unreasonable Seizures of Unreasonable People,”
34 Col. Human Rts. L. Rev. 261 (Spring, 2003)

“Landry v. Attorney General:
DNA Databanks Hold a Mortgage
on Privacy Rights,”
Boston Bar J., Jan/Feb 2000

“Evidence – Victim’s Privileges,”
Nat’l. L.J., September 11, 2000

“High Speed Chases: More Deadly
than a Speeding Bullet?”
Trial Magazine, December, 1997

Books

Non-fiction

The Federalist Society: How Conservatives
Took the Law Back from Liberals,
Michael Avery and Danielle McLaughlin,
Vanderbilt University Press, 2013

We Dissent, Talking Back to the Rehnquist Court,
New York University Press, 2009
(editor and contributing author)

Pro Se Dissolution of Marriage Handbook (Connecticut)
(Cobblesmith, 1981) Avery, Polan and Eldrich

Fiction

Mama’s Boy, a Susan Sorella Mystery
Fearless Advocates Press, 2024

Murder in Blue, a Susan Sorella Mystery
Fearless Advocates Press, 2023

The Cooperating Witness, a Susan Sorella Mystery
Fearless Advocates Press, 2020

Small Town Trial
Relay Publishing, 2025
Co-author with Peter Kirkland

Small Town Judgment
Relay Publishing, 2025
Co-author with Peter Kirkland