David R. Dow is the Cullen Professor at the University of Houston Law Center. He teaches and writes in the areas of contracts, constitutional law and theory, first amendment, and death penalty law.
The author of seven books and scores of scholarly articles, Dow's work also regularly appears in such popular publications as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Nation, Politico, and The Daily Beast (a more complete list is available on his c.v.).
Dow's critically acclaimed memoir, The Autobiography of an Execution, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle award and the winner of the 2010 Barnes & Noble Discover Award for nonfiction. His second memoir, Things I've Learned From Dying, was named by NPR as one of the best books of 2014. His most recent book, Confessions of an Innocent Man, published in 2019, was short-listed for the Crook's Corner Literary Prize and was named by the Wall Street Journal as one of the best books of the year.
Dow is the founder of Texas's oldest innocence project, the Texas Innocence Network, an organization that uses UH law students to investigate claims of actual innocence brought by Texas prisoners. He is also the co-founder (with his wife, Katya Dow) of the Juvenile and Children’s Advocacy Project, which provides pro bono sealing services to eligible juveniles and offers pro bono representation to juveniles involved in school disciplinary proceedings or the juvenile justice system; JCAP and its legal team also provide cutting-edge trauma-informed therapy and representation to so-called dual status youth (those involved in both the juvenile and DFPS courts).
In Dow's UHLC-based death penalty clinic, students assist in the representation of inmates facing execution. Over the past twenty years, Dow and his team have represented more than one hundred death row inmates at every stage of their state and federal appeals. Dow's acclaimed TED talk on the death penalty has been viewed more than 4 million times.
Dow is also Of Counsel to the law firm of Smyser Kaplan & Veselka, where he specializes in work on cases involving contracts disputes and interpretation and on dispositive motions. He also regularly serves as an expert witness in commercial cases turning on issues of contract law.