Mark Osler

Mark Osler is the Robert and Marion Short Professor of Law at the University of St. Thomas (MN), where he was chosen as Professor of the Year in 2016, 2019 and 2022. He also holds the Ruthie Mattox Preaching Chair at First Covenant Church, Minneapolis. Osler’s writing on clemency, sentencing and narcotics policy has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and The Atlantic and in law journals at Harvard, Stanford, the University of Chicago, Northwestern, Georgetown, the University of Texas, Ohio State, UNC, William and Mary, and Rutgers.

A former federal prosecutor, he won the case of Spears v. United States in the U.S. Supreme Court, with the Court ruling that judges could categorically reject the 100-to-1 ratio between crack and powder cocaine in the federal sentencing guidelines.

Osler is a graduate of the College of William and Mary and Yale Law School.