Nora

V.

Demleitner

Nora Demleitner is the immediate past president of St. John's College, Annapolis where she served as president from January 2022 through June 2025. She was also college-wide president during the 2024/25 academic year. 

Before her appointment at St. John's, she was the Roy L. Steinheimer Jr. Professor of Law at Washington and Lee University, Virginia, where she had served as dean of the law school. She is a nationally and internationally known criminal law scholar whose publications are largely in the areas of sentencing and criminal justice reform, often with a comparative angle. In addition, she has written on various aspects of higher education. She is the lead author of Sentencing Law and Policy (5th ed., Aspen 2022) and an editor of the Federal Sentencing Reporter. Her articles appeared in leading U.S. law reviews, including the Stanford Law Review, Minnesota Law Review, and the Florida Law Review. She regularly publishes opinion pieces in outlets such as the Washington Post and The Hill. Currently she is working on a narrative non-fiction book on the U.S. criminal justice system (forthcoming fall 2026, Prometheus Publishing).

Nora Demleitner is an elected member of the American Law Institute, the European Law Institute, and the International Academy of Comparative Law. She is also a member of the Council on Criminal Justice and an American Bar Fellow. She has received numerous fellowships, both in the United States and abroad, including from the German Academic Exchange Service, the Max-Planck Society, and the Fulbright Commission.