Lee Dexter Schinasi

Biography

Professor Lee D. Schinasi received a Bachelors Degree in economics in 1968 and a J.D. degree in 1971 from the University of Toledo. Immediately following graduation, he worked as a trial attorney for the Office of Economic Opportunity and the Toledo Legal Aid Society before beginning a twenty-three year career in the United States Army Judge Advocate General's Corps. His final military assignment was as Dean of Academics and Vice Dean of the Army's Graduate Law School at the University of Virginia. Professor Schinasi had previously been a member of the JAG School's law faculty and taught evidence, litigation skills, and criminal law related courses. Professor Schinasi's military legal experiences include serving as a prosecutor, criminal defense attorney, and government appellate attorney. During the 1980's, he worked in the Pentagon's intelligence community as legal advisor to the Army's Chief of Staff for Intelligence, and later with the Department of Justice in prosecuting related white-collar crime and internal fraud cases. He attended the resident Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and the resident Army War College at Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania. Professor Schinasi also served as Staff Judge Advocate (General Counsel) of the 3rd Infantry Division when it was located in Wurzburg, Germany, and United States Army South when it was located in Panama City, Panama. Professor Schinasi is a co-author of several books on evidence and litigation skills including, The Military Rules of Evidence Manual, Military Evidentiary Foundations, The Florida Evidence Code Trial Book, Florida Evidentiary Foundations, Evidence in Florida, Emerging Problems Under the Federal Rules of Evidence, Lawyers Cooperative Practice Guide: Florida Evidence. For more than 30 years, Professor Schinasi has taught evidence, litigation skills, and national security law related topics. Currently, he also serves as Executive Director of Clinical Programs. Before joining the Barry Law faculty, he taught at the University of Miami School of Law in Coral Gables, from June 1995 to August 2004. Professor Schinasi's current teaching responsibilities focus on Torts, Civil Procedure, the Federal and Florida Rules of Evidence, and National Security Law. He is a frequent speaker on these subjects at national, military, and state level continuing legal education programs. In January 2015, Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter appointed Professor Schinasi as a Special Federal Employee to serve on the Judicial Proceedings Panel (JPP) Subcommittee. The JPP was established on June 2014, in accordance with Section 576(a)(2) of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013. The Judicial Proceedings Panel is an independent federal advisory committee tasked with conducting an in-depth review of the military’s procedures regarding sexual offenses. The Panel’s ultimate goal is to develop recommendations for Congress and the Secretary of Defense on improving these procedures. In September 2000, then Secretary of Defense William Cohen appointed Professor Schinasi to a national advisory panel which oversees the development of Military Justice throughout the Department of Defense. He has also served on the Steering Committee of the Florida Bar's Evidence Project, and was a member of the council of the American Bar Association's Government and Public Sector Lawyers Division, and was the Chair of its Military Law Conference. In the spring of 2001, the American Bar Association's Central and Eastern European Law Initiative selected Professor Schinasi to work with the former Soviet Republic of Moldova's Law Schools in developing their own western style legal education programs. In 2002 he was asked to fulfill a similar mission with Serbian law schools. In the fall of 2003, Professor Schinasi was selected as a Senior Fulbright Scholar and joined the law faculty of Nis University, in Nis, Serbia, where he taught Comparative Jurisprudence and legal skills courses.

Research Interest

Civil Procedure Criminal Law Evidence National Security Law Torts Transnational Security Law