Professor Falk is particularly interested in current First Amendment issues regarding disinformation, hate speech, and incitement to violence on social media.  He is also concerned with the role of race and poverty in our criminal justice system, including in capital punishment.  

He would like to help students understand and critique legal arguments and develop their analytical, writing and oral communication skills, whatever their politics or career aspirations might be.

As passionate about history as he is about the law, Professor Falk holds a master’s degree in history from Trinity College in addition to his undergraduate and law degrees from Harvard.  His areas of interest include the history of the United States Supreme Court and law in the early American republic, with an emphasis on the framing of the Constitution, slavery, federal and state relations with Indigenous people, the history of gun rights and gun regulation, and the modern ramifications of these subjects. Together with students, he has investigated the roots of mass incarceration in Connecticut prisons and jails.  See  Summer Research Project Has Students ‘Humanizing History’ at Old New-Gate Prison | Trinity College (trincoll.edu).

Before coming to Trinity College, Professor Falk spent more than three decades as a legal aid lawyer.  He represented hundreds of indigent criminal defendants in state and federal court and was repeatedly recognized as one of Connecticut’s leading appellate advocates.  Among his cases are State v. Gonzalez, 149 Conn. 408, 87 A.3d 1101 (2014) (evidence did not support jury's verdict that defendant was guilty as an accessory to manslaughter in the first degree with a firearm); State v. Terwilliger, 294 Conn. 399, 984 A.2d 721 (2009) (defendant denied due process of law by faulty jury instruction on state's burden of proof regarding defense of premises), and State v. Peeler, 265 Conn. 460, 828 A.2d 1216 (2003), cert. denied, 541 U.S. 1029 (2004) (improper disqualification of defendant's lawyer of choice in murder prosecution violated Sixth Amendment right to counsel).

Professor Falk draws on this experience to teach Law, Argument and Public Policy, a course in which students write briefs and argue appeals.  He also coaches the Trinity College Mock Trial Team and advises the Pre-Law Society.