Deborah Tuerkheimer

Professor of Law & Author

Deborah Tuerkheimer is a former prosecutor specializing in domestic violence, and a legal expert and leading authority on sexual violence crimes. She is a professor at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law where she teaches and writes in the areas of criminal law, evidence, and feminist legal theory.

Deborah Tuerkheimer is the author of Credible: Why We Doubt Accusers and Protect Abusers published 2021, in which she provides a framework to explain the “credibility discount”—our dismissal of claims by certain kinds of speakers—primarily women, resulting in justice denied for victims of sexual violence.

She is also a co-author of the casebook Feminist Jurisprudence: Cases and Materials and the author of numerous articles on sexual violence and domestic violence. Tuerkheimer earned her undergraduate degree from Harvard College and her law degree from Yale Law School. She served for five years as an Assistant District Attorney in the New York County District Attorney's Office, where she specialized in domestic violence and child abuse prosecution. In 2015, Tuerkheimer was elected to the American Law Institute, an esteemed group of judges, lawyers, and legal scholars dedicated to the development of the law.