Alexandra L. Klein Assistant Professor of Law

Phone: 

Email: aklein@wlu.edu

Office: 459 Lewis Hall 

SSRN  •  CV  •  Scholarly Commons

Area of Expertise

Criminal Law, Criminal  Procedure, Death Penalty

Education

JD, Washington and Lee University

BFA, Virginia Commonwealth University

About

Professor Klein teaches and writes in the fields of capital punishment, criminal law, and criminal procedure. Her research has focused on the Eighth Amendment, arbitrariness, and cruelty in punishment. Her scholarship has appeared in, or is forthcoming in, the Ohio State Law Journal, the Florida Law Review, the University of Detroit Mercy Law Review, the Nevada Law Journal, and the Northeastern University Law Review. She has also published in The Nation, the San Antonio Express-News, and the Houston Chronicle.

Before joining the Washington and Lee Law faculty in 2024, Professor Klein was an Assistant Professor of Law at St. Mary's University School of Law in San Antonio, Texas, where she was named an Englehardt Research Fellow and received the Al Kauffman Faculty Excellence & Support Award. She was a Visiting Assistant Professor of Law at Washington and Lee University School of Law from 2019 to 2022. Before joining the legal academy, Professor Klein clerked for the Honorable Sally D. Adkins of the Supreme Court of Maryland and the Honorable Danny J. Boggs of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.

Professor Klein received her J.D. summa cum laude from Washington & Lee University School of Law, where she served as Senior Articles Editor on the Washington & Lee Law Review and received the Washington & Lee Law Council Law Review Award for her Student Note. She received the John W. Davis Prize for the highest cumulative grade point average, the Barry W. Sullivan Constitutional Law Award, the Clinical Legal Education Association Award, graduated Order of the Coif, and was inducted into Phi Delta Phi and Omicron Delta Kappa.

Professor Klein served in the United States Peace Corps in the Republic of Moldova from 2008 to 2010. She received her B.F.A. cum laude from Virginia Commonwealth University. She is admitted to practice law in the Commonwealth of Virginia.