Matthew Tokson
Professor
The University of Utah College of Law
Matthew Tokson is a professor of law at the University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law, where he teaches criminal procedure, criminal law, privacy and cyberlaw, artificial intelligence, and advanced topics in criminal law and procedure.
His research focuses on the Fourth Amendment and its application to new technologies and evolving social contexts. He has also written about privacy, artificial intelligence, judicial decision-making, and criminal punishment. His article “Knowledge and Fourth Amendment Privacy” was discussed during oral arguments in Carpenter v. United States before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Before joining the University of Utah faculty, Tokson served as director of the Law and Informatics Institute and as an assistant professor of law at Northern Kentucky University Chase College of Law. Earlier in his career, he worked as a senior associate at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP in Washington, D.C., where he focused on investigations and criminal litigation, as well as appellate and Supreme Court litigation.
Tokson also served as a law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David H. Souter, and to Judge Raymond A. Randolph of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. He previously was a Bigelow/Kauffman fellow at the University of Chicago Law School and worked as a research assistant to Cass Sunstein.
His honors and distinctions include the University of Utah Presidential Scholar Award, which recognizes mid-career faculty for excellence in scholarship, education, and outreach. He also was named one of the University of Utah’s Top 25 Researchers campus-wide. Additional honors include the Faculty Service Award and Early Career Faculty Award from the University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law, as well as the Privacy Law Scholars Conference’s PLSC Reidenberg-Kerr Award.
Tokson is a member of the Utah Supreme Court Advisory Committee on the Rules of Criminal Procedure and previously served on the board of the Utah Criminal Justice Center.
He earned a J.D., with high honors, from the University of Chicago Law School, where he served as executive articles editor of The University of Chicago Law Review and was elected to the Order of the Coif. He also earned a bachelor’s, cum laude, from Dartmouth College.
