Professor Ed Butterfoss joined the Hamline University School of Law faculty from the Philadelphia law firm of Pepper, Hamilton and Scheetz, where he practiced in the areas of product liability, employment discrimination, and commercial law. He also handled pro bono cases involving prisoners’ rights and was a volunteer attorney for the Support Center for Child Advocacy.
As a faculty member at Mitchell Hamline, Professor Butterfoss teaches contracts, criminal law, and criminal procedure. He is known for providing a challenging classroom environment where students learn to make solid, persuasive arguments, and to see a case from a judge’s viewpoint.
Butterfoss previously served as associate dean for academic affairs at Hamline Law from 1995 to 1998 and again from July 2010 through December 2012; he was dean of the law school from 1998 to 2003. His articles on criminal procedure are frequently cited by state and federal courts and in treatises. He has served as a special assistant Hennepin County attorney, as a member of the Mayor’s Task Force on Police-Community Relations in Saint Paul, a member of the Minnesota Supreme Court-Criminal Courts Study Commission, as a founding board member of the Innocence Project of Minnesota, as a board member of the ACLU of Minnesota and Centro Legal of Minnesota, and as a member of the ABA Accreditation Committee, which he chaired for three years.
Butterfoss has served for many years on the Minnesota Judges’ Criminal Benchbook Committee, was a founding board member of the Innocence Project of Minnesota, and served as a board member of the ACLU of Minnesota. Butterfoss served seven years on the ABA Accreditation Committee, which he chaired for three years, and two years on its Council of Legal Education, before joining the ABA Section on Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar as Senior Accreditation Counsel from 2018 until his retirement in 2022.