Joshua Dressler is an American retired law professor. He is a Distinguished University Professor Emeritus at the Ohio State University.

Dressler attended UCLA, earning his B.A. in 1968, and then earned his J.D. from the UCLA School of Law in 1973.^[1][2]

An expert in criminal law and criminal procedure, he has authored various casebooks and texts used in American law schools.^[1][3]

He taught at Wayne State University and Hamline University, before joining the faculty of University of the Pacific, McGeorge School of Law, where he held the first Distinguished Professor and Scholar Chair.^[3] Dressler then taught at the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law,^[4] beginning his tenure at OSU in 2001.^[5] He was also a visiting professor at various institutions across the United States, as well as internationally at the University of British Columbia and University of Auckland in New Zealand.^[1] In 2005, he was named a Distinguished University Lecturer.^[5] In a 2014 article about his nomination for Distinguished University Professor Emeritus, the university wrote that Dressler "is, without exaggeration and by nearly any accepted standard, the country's leading academic authority in the field of criminal law — and among the leaders in criminal procedure".^[5]

Dressler is the editor-in-chief of the Encyclopedia of Crime and Justice and is credited for helping create the Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law; he serves as the co-editor of the latter.^[1] His research included the topic of battered women who kill their abusers.^[6] On articles regarding legal matters, Dressler's expertise in criminal law has been cited by various media outlets including Vox, Mother Jones, the Boston Review, and the New York Times.^{[7][8][9][10][11]}

Books

• Understanding Criminal Law (1987)^[5][12]
• Criminal Procedure: Principles, Policies, and Perspectives^[2]
• Cases and Materials on Criminal Law (1994)^[5]

Articles

• "Professor Delgado's 'Brainwashing' Defense: Courting a Determinist Legal System" (1979). in Minnesota Law Review. 1711.^[13]
• "Battered Women, Self-Defense, and the Law" (2011). in Fordham Law Review (with Holly Maguigan)^[14]