Professor “Cookie” Ridolfi is Professor of Law and Executive Director of the Northern California Innocence Project, a major clinical program she co-founded at Santa Clara University School of Law in 2001. She co-founded the Innocence Network in 2004, a collaboration of innocence projects across the United States, Canada, and Australia. Ridolfi has also led a group of law clinic students in the representation of a battered woman, named Frances Caccavale, who became one of the few women who was granted clemency by republican Governor Pete Wilson in 1992.

Prior to joining Santa Clara University School of Law in 1989, Ridolfi was a trial lawyer with the Defender Association of Philadelphia and was both a pioneer and an innovator in the early development and application of social science to jury selection. She founded the northeast office of the National Jury Project and was a leader in the development of expert testimony for use in cases of battered women raising claims of self-defense. She served in the Special Defense Unit of the Public Defender’s Office in Philadelphia, PA.

• Russell Galloway Professor of the Year
• Commissioner, California Senate Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice, 2004-08

• Criminal law
• Criminal Procedure
• Post-Conviction Procedure
• Evidence
• Trial Advocacy
• Jury Selection
• Battered Women
• Clemency
• Clinical Teaching