Alec Karakatsanis

Alec Karakatsanis (born November 7, 1983) is an American civil rights lawyer and author. He is the co-founder of Equal Justice Under Law. Karakatsanis' legal work has targeted the American money bail system. He has written and spoken extensively about negative impacts of copaganda, propaganda efforts to improve public perception about police and law enforcement.

Alec Karakatsanis
Born	(1983-11-07) November 7, 1983 (age 41) Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Education	Yale University (BA) Harvard University (JD)
Website	Official website

In 2016, Karakatsanis was awarded the Stephen B. Bright Award by Gideon's Promise and the Trial Lawyer of the Year Award by Public Justice. He published a book named Copaganda: How Police and the Media Manipulate Our News in 2025.

Early life and education

Alec Karakatsanis was raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His father was a lawyer, and his mother worked as a chemist at a large pharmaceutical company.^[1]

Karakatsanis studied Ethics, Politics, & Economics at Yale University, where exposure to critical social theory influenced his perspective on society. Karakatsanis entered Harvard Law School in 2005, initially intending to focus on school desegregation and education policy.^[2][1]

During his first year, volunteer work with Harvard Defenders shifted his focus to criminal defense for people accused of crimes, particularly those without resources. He continued this work throughout law school, providing legal defense to clients experiencing poverty through the Criminal Justice Institute clinic at Harvard Law School.^[1] He was also appointed the Supreme Court Chair of the Harvard Law Review.^[2] Karakatsanis earned his Doctor of Law from Harvard Law School in 2008.^[1]

Legal career

After completing law school, Karakatsanis clerked for a judge in Montgomery, Alabama, and served subsequently as a federal public defender. He also practiced law at the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia.^[1]

Utilizing a seed grant from Harvard Law School's Public Service Venture Fund, Karakatsanis co-founded the legal nonprofit Equal Justice Under Law (EJUL) with a law school classmate named Phil Telfeyan in early 2014. The organization was operated frugally, with its founders minimizing expenses by staying with friends, sleeping on couches and floors, and preparing inexpensive meals.^[3]

Karakatsanis began investigating local courts in Alabama, observing cases in which individuals were jailed solely for unpaid fines and fees.^[1]

In January 2015, Karakatsanis filed a lawsuit on behalf of Christy Dawn Varden in Clanton, Alabama, challenging the city's bail policies, which required defendants to pay a fixed amount for release regardless of their financial situation. The suit argued that such policies discriminated against poor defendants by detaining them while wealthier individuals could pay for release. Clanton responded by agreeing to release most misdemeanor defendants without bail and to allow defendants to see a judge within 48 hours.^[3]

He also met Sharnalle Mitchell and Lorenzo Brown, both jailed for unpaid traffic tickets, and filed a federal lawsuit on their behalf. The city of Montgomery subsequently released all individuals held in similar circumstances and redesigned its municipal court system. Karakatsanis collaborated with the Southern Poverty Law Center on the settlement.^[1]

Karakatsanis then filed similar lawsuits in six additional jurisdictions across four states, representing individuals who remained jailed solely due to their inability to pay bail. The legal strategy centered on the Equal Protection Clause, contending that it was unconstitutional to detain people because they could not pay, while others in similar circumstances could go free if they had funds.^[3]

In 2014 and 2015, Karakatsanis and his colleagues brought multiple class-action lawsuits against municipal courts across the United States, challenging wealth-based detention practices.^[1] These lawsuits led to policy changes in five cities and gained support from the federal Justice Department, which filed statements of interest supporting the position that fixed-amount bail schemes without consideration of indigence violated the Fourteenth Amendment.^[3]

Karakatsanis has emphasized collaborative work with local partners, community groups, and a broad range of allies in addressing cases that challenge "systems of human caging” and wealth-based detention. Karakatsanis founded the legal nonprofit Civil Rights Corps in 2016 after leaving EJUL.^[1] In July 2016, Civil Rights Corps and ArchCity Defenders received a landmark settlement when the city of Jennings, Missouri agreed to pay $4.7 million to 2,000 people incarcerated in its jail for inability to pay traffic tickets and other minor fees.^[4]

Numerous U.S. media outlets have featured Karakatsanis' work, including The New Yorker,^[5] The Huffington Post,^[6] The Washington Post,^[7] The Marshall Project,^[8] and The New York Times.^[9]

At Civil Rights Corp, he and his team have filed lawsuits targeting the use of money bail and other practices resulting in the pretrial detention of individuals unable to pay.^[1] In May 2016, CRC and partners filed a federal lawsuit against Harris County, Texas, regarding the jailing of misdemeanor defendants unable to pay bail. In April 2017, a federal judge granted a preliminary injunction halting the county's practices, resulting in the release of individuals charged with misdemeanors.^[1]

His work has drawn attention from the Department of Justice and federal courts. He leads Civil Rights Corps, which is based in Washington, D.C., working on litigation related to prosecutorial misconduct, indigent defense and immigration enforcement.^[1] Karakatsanis has expressed concern about the enforceability of settlements, noting that governments sometimes failed to follow through on agreed reforms, necessitating ongoing legal oversight and, at times, renewed litigation.^[3]

In 2025, he has published a book "Copaganda: How Police and the Media Manipulate Our News" which breaks down all the ways that our news ecosystem is polluted with pro-police PR.^{[citation needed]}

Selected publications

• Copaganda: How Police and the Media Manipulate Our News. The New Press. April 15, 2025. ISBN 9781620978535.^[10]
• Usual Cruelty: The Complicity of Lawyers in the Criminal Injustice System. New York: The New Press. 2019. ISBN 978-1-62097-527-5.
• "The Human Lawyer" (PDF). N.Y.U. Review of Law & Social Change. 34: 563–593. 2010.
• "United States v. Hungerford: Ninth Circuit Affirms Mandatory Sentence" (PDF). Harvard Law Review. 120 (7): 1988–1995. 2007. ISSN 0017-811X.
• "Policing, Mass Imprisonment, and the Failure of American Lawyers". Harvard Law Review Forum. 128 (6). April 28, 2015.
• "President Obama's Department of Injustice". The New York Times. August 18, 2015. ISSN 0362-4331.
• "Why US v Blewett is the Obama Justice Department's greatest shame". The Guardian. July 23, 2013. ISSN 0261-3077.

Awards

• 2016 Trial Lawyer of the Year (Public Justice)^[11]
• 2016 Stephen B. Bright Award (Gideon's Promise)^[12]
• 2016 Emerging Leader Award (Johnson Institute for Responsible Leadership at the University of Pittsburgh)^[13]