Eileen R. Prescott

Eileen Prescott joined the University of Georgia School of Law in the fall of 2025 as an assistant professor teaching in the area of criminal law.

Previously, she served as the project director for the Accountable Prosecutor Project at Wake Forest University School of Law. For four years, Prescott led research in collaboration with students on prosecutor accountability and published the National Report on the State Law on Prosecutor Immunity. She also worked to organize a variety of transparency-oriented efforts such as a televised prosecutor debate, speaking events with wrongly incarcerated people and local Know Your Rights events with high school students.

Previously, she served for two years as an assistant district attorney in the Federal Litigation Unit of the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office, responding to federal habeas petitions from state prisoners who were convicted in Philadelphia. After law school, Prescott returned to her hometown of Peoria, Illinois, to serve as judicial clerk for Chief Judge James E. Shadid of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of Illinois.

Prescott's scholarship examines criminal justice reform with a focus on prosecutor behavior and prison reform. She has written about the state laws governing lawsuits for prosecutor misconduct in "Absolutely Unnecessary Immunity" for the Nebraska Law Review and coauthored a symposium piece on prison conditions with an incarcerated former psychologist, Michelle Theer, titled "Prisoners and Choice," published in the Touro Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity. Her current works-in-progress examine appellate procedure, internal prosecutorial policies and the relevance of prison conditions for prosecutorial behavior.

Prescott earned her bachelor’s degree summa cum laude from Bradley University and her law degree from the University of Chicago, where she served on the Chicago Journal of International Law. She met her husband playing in the pit band for the law school musical.