Background

John D. Bessler was born on the 23rd of October, 1967 in Muncie, Indiana, United States. John's parents, Bill and Marilyn Bessler, both taught at Minnesota State University.

Education

John Bessler attended Loyola Catholic School in Mankato, Minnesota. John received a Bachelor's degree in political science from the University of Minnesota in 1988. In 1991 he studied at Indiana University at Bloomington School of Law and earned his Juris Doctor degree in 1991. Bassler went to obtain multiple degrees such as a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from Hamline University and a Master of Studies in international human rights law from Oxford University.

Career

John D. Bessler worked as an associate lawyer at Faegre & Benson from 1991 to 1996. In 1996 he worked as an associate lawyer at Leonard Street & Deinard PA. In addition, Bessler was a clerk for U.S. Magistrate Judge John M. Mason of the District of Minnesota from 1996 to 1998. In 1998 he worked as an adjunct professor at Minnesota School of Law and he was a partner at Kelly & Berens, Minneapolis. John specialized in death penalty issues at the George Washington University Law School.

He's been teaching as an Associate Professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law with an extensive resume in academia since 2009. John is also an adjunct professor of law at the Georgetown University Law Center and is of counsel at Berens & Miller, a law firm in Minneapolis. He taught at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland in 2017, and he was a visiting scholar/research fellow at the Human Rights Center at the University of Minnesota Law School in 2018. He has also served in the past as the Region III Director of the National Moot Court Competition.

John Bessler is also an accomplished author. The lawyer has written or edited ten books in total, six of which were on capital punishment. His first book, “Death in the Dark: Midnight Executions in America”, was published in 1998. “Kiss of Death: America's Love Affair with the Death Penalty” was written in 2002. John wrote his third book “Legacy of Violence: Lynch Mobs and Executions in Minnesota” in 2003. In 2007 he wrote “Writing for Life: The Craft of Writing for Everyday Life”. Bessler wrote in 2014 “The Birth of American Law: An Italian Philosopher and the American Revolution”. John also edited Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer's 2016 book, “Against the Death Penalty”. John's latest book “The Baron and the Marquis: Liberty, Tyranny, and the Enlightenment Maxim That Can Remake American Criminal Justice”, was published in 2019 by Carolina Academic Press.

Achievements

• John D. Bessler is the author of a great number of publications on capital punishment. His 2014 book, "The Birth of American Law: An Italian Philosopher and the American Revolution" won three book awards, including the prestigious Scribes Book Award - an annual award given out since 1961 for “the best work of legal scholarship published during the previous year”.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Kiss of Death: America's Love Affair with the Death Penalty

    (Documents the life stories of death-row prisoners and the...)

    2002
  • Cruel and Unusual: The American Death Penalty and the Founders’ Eighth Amendment

    (Cruel and Unusual takes the reader back in time to show h...)

    2012
  • The Birth of American Law: An Italian Philosopher and the American Revolution

    (The Birth of American Law: An Italian Philosopher and the...)

    2014
  • The Baron and the Marquis: Liberty, Tyranny, and the Enlightenment Maxim That Can Remake American Criminal Justice

    (The Baron and the Marquis explores the history of the max...)

    2019
  • Legacy Of Violence: Lynch Mobs And Executions In Minnesota

    (Minnesota is one of only twelve states that does not allo...)

    2003
  • The Death Penalty as Torture: From the Dark Ages to Abolition

    (During the Dark Ages and the Renaissance, Europes monarch...)

    2017
  • Against the Death Penalty

    (A landmark dissenting opinion arguing against the death p...)

    2016
  • Death in the Dark: Midnight Executions in America

    (Executions in the United States are hidden from public vi...)

    1997
  • Writing for Life: The Craft of Writing for Everyday Living 2007

Membership

John Bessler is a member of the Minnesota Bar Association.

Connections

John Bessler is married to Amy Klobuchar. John and Amy reportedly met at the Coyote Cafe in Minneapolis, and they married a year later in 1993. They have one daughter. Their 24-year-old daughter, Abigail Bessler, graduated from Yale in 2017. Abigail currently works for a New York City councilman and is also a stand-up comedian.

Father:

Bill Bessler

Mother:

Marilyn Bessler

Wife:

Amy Klobuchar

Daughter:

Abigail Bessler