David Pimentel

Professor David Pimentel joined the University of Idaho law faculty in 2015 from Ohio Northern University, where he directed the Center for Democratic Governance and Rule of Law, and later the LL.M. program in the same subject area. In addition to numerous publications in the “rule of law” field—including post-conflict justice, legal pluralism, and judicial reform—he has published on issues ranging from forfeiture reform to child protection (and the "free range kid") to the law and policy of bicycling in America. As a young man, he studied at BYU, Berkeley, and Harvard, and has graduate degrees in both law and economics from Berkeley. He recently completed his PhD in Law and Politics at University of Graz in Austria. Before beginning his academic career, he worked with the United Nations as the Chief of Court Management at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, and as Head of Rule of Law in South Sudan for the U.N. Mission there. He has also led court reform projects in Romania and in post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina. In 2010-11, he returned to Bosnia on a Fulbright, as Visiting Professor at the University of Sarajevo, to research the impact of post-conflict judicial reform, research he later developed into his doctoral dissertation. He worked for over 10 years in the federal judiciary—including one year as a Supreme Court Fellow in Washington, DC, and one year as a law clerk for the Honorable Martin Pence, in the U.S. District Court in Honolulu—after two years of private practice with the Seattle law firm Perkins Coie. He and his wife Annette Bay Pimentel (an author of juvenile nonfiction) have six beautiful and brilliant children, as well as the distinction of having dragged them through some of the more inhospitable places on earth. He loves bow ties, the outdoors, and running; during COVID he learned to play the ukulele, but not very well. At University of Idaho, Professor Pimentel teaches Torts, Remedies, Advanced Torts, Comparative Law, and Law and Economics.