Michael Shapiro

J.D., Emory University

Constitutional Law

Michael Shapiro is a Clinical Associate Professor in the Department of Criminal Justice & Criminology at Georgia State University and has been teaching at the university level for nearly 20 years. Shapiro is also the Coordinator of the Undergraduate Internship Program. He chairs the Department of Criminal Justice & Criminology’s Awards and Scholarships Committee and serves on the Department of Criminal Justice & Criminology’s Undergraduate Curriculum Committee. At the college and university levels, he serves on the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies Academic Program Committee and the Fiscal Year 2021 Georgia State University Innovations Fund Voting Committee. He is a recipient of a Fiscal Year 2020-2021 Faculty Fellowship to support the College-to-Career initiative and was the recipient of the 2015 Andrew Young School of Policy Studies’ Excellence in Teaching Award as well as the 2019 Andrew Young School of Policy Studies Outstanding Faculty Partner Award. Finally, he serves as Faculty Adviser to the Pre-Law Chapter of Phi Alpha Delta, the international legal fraternity.

Shapiro is a graduate of Emory University (B.A. Political Science, 1978) and the Emory University School of Law (J.D., 1981). He has been a member of the State Bar of Georgia since 1981 and has been licensed to practice law in the State of Ohio since 1991. He is also a member of Alpha Phi Sigma (the National Criminal Justice Honor Society) and Pi Sigma Alpha (the international Political Science Honor Society).

He has worked in litigation firms in the Atlanta area, including serving as Managing Partner of Fambrough and Shapiro, P.C., and Peters, Townsend, Shapiro and Wilson, P.A. For more than seven years he was the Executive Director of the Georgia Indigent Defense Council (GIDC), the predecessor to the current Georgia Public Defender Council.

He is a Past President of the Georgia Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (http://gacdl.memberlodge.org/), and has served on a wide variety of State boards and committees including the Criminal Justice Coordinating Council, Crime Victim Compensation Committee, and the Information Technology Policy Council, as well as the State Bar of Georgia’s Drug Task Force, Post-Conviction Capital Representation Committee, and Uniform Rules Committee. He is also a Past President of the Criminal Justice Association of Georgia (cjag.us) and serves as the Editor of their peer-reviewed online journal, The Pursuit.

Between 2010 and 2022, Shapiro served as an Adjunct Professor at the Coles College of Business at Kennesaw State University, where he taught courses in Employment Law and Intellectual Property & Anti-Competition Law. He serves on the McGraw-Hill Academic Advisory Board for Weapons of Mass Destruction and Terrorism and is a Faculty Affiliate of Kennesaw State University’s Siegel Institute for Leadership, Ethics & Character. He is certified as a Guest Instructor in the area of Criminal Law by the Georgia Peace Officer Standards and Training Council (POST) and for many years has updated their manual on Criminal Procedure.

He, along with others, has authored several publications, including “Protection Through Corporate Marketing in Professional Sports,” “Mistakes, Reasonable Mistakes, and Unforgiveable Mistakes: The U.S. Supreme Court’s Ruling in Heien v. North Carolina,” “Escobedo v. Illinois: Not Quite Forgotten,” “The Class of ’63: Major Supreme Court Cases of the 1963 Term,” “Looking Back on Gideon v. Wainwright,” “Trouble in River City: Invoking the Right to Counsel in Municipal Courts,” and “Chimel v. California, 40 Years Later,” as well as the “Handbook for Faculty, Use of Role Play and Practical Exercises in Teaching Ethics in Criminal Justice.” He has authored ancillary materials for textbooks on ethics and regularly reviews proposed texts in the areas of criminal law and ethics. He frequently lectures on technology in the courtroom and in the practice of law.

He teaches a number of undergraduate classes at Georgia State University including Ethical Issues in Criminal Justice, American Criminal Courts, Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure, Policing and Individual Rights, Perspectives: Comparative Law & Policy, and the Internship and Field Placement courses. He also teaches two graduate level courses focused on law, Legal Aspects of Criminal Justice and Legal Issues in Criminal Justice.