Richard Boldt has been on the University of Maryland faculty since 1989. He teaches courses in constitutional law, criminal law, mental disability law and torts. Professor Boldt writes about criminal responsibility, contemporary blaming practices, and the intersection of the criminal justice and public health systems, with a special emphasis on the legal issues surrounding drug addiction and drug use disorders. He also has a research interest in the role that legal regimes play in the development of individual and community identities.

Professor Boldt is cooperating counsel to the Legal Action Center and is a member of the Leadership Council of Physicians and Lawyers for National Drug Policy. He is a frequent lecturer and has written numerous articles that have been published in leading law journals. His work includes: “Juristocracy in the Trenches: Problem-Solving Judges and Therapeutic Jurisprudence in Drug Treatment Courts and Unified Family Courts” (written with Professor Jana Singer) and “Public Education as Public Space: Some Reflections on the Unfinished Work of Marc Feldman,” both of which appeared in the Maryland Law Review; “Evaluating Histories of Substance Abuse in Cases Involving the Termination of Parental Rights,” which appeared in the Journal of Health Care Law & Policy; “Rehabilitative Punishment and the Drug Treatment Court Movement,” published by the Washington University Law Quarterly; “A Study in Regulatory Method, Local Political Cultures, and Jurisprudential Voice: The Application of Federal Confidentiality Law to Project Head Start,” which appeared in the Michigan Law Review; “The Construction of Responsibility in the Criminal Law,” published by the University of Pennsylvania Law Review; “The Faces of Law in Theory and Practice: Doctrine, Rhetoric, and Social Context,” which appeared in the Hastings Law Journal; and “Restitution, Criminal Law, and the Ideology of Individuality,” published by the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology.

Boldt received an A.B. summa cum laude from Columbia College, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He obtained his law degree from Yale Law School, where he served as an editor of the Yale Law and Policy Review. After practicing at the Legal Action Center, a public interest law firm in New York City specializing in the legal issues faced by recovering substance abusers and ex-offenders, Professor Boldt began his academic career at the Northern Illinois University College of Law. He also held a faculty position at the City University of New York Law School at Queens College and was a visiting professor at Brooklyn Law School. Professor Boldt served as associate dean at the School of Law from 2002 to 2006.