Donald Eugene Wilkes Jr. (July 30, 1944 – June 7, 2019) from

Daytona Beach Daytona Beach is a coastal resort city in Volusia County, Florida, United States. Located on the East Coast of the United States, its population was 72,647 at the 2020 census. It is part of the Deltona–Daytona Beach–Ormond Beach metropo ...

Florida Florida ( ; ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It borders the Gulf of Mexico to the west, Alabama to the northwest, Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia to the north, the Atlantic ...

) was professor of law at the

University of Georgia School of Law The University of Georgia School of Law (Georgia Law) is the law school of the University of Georgia, a Public university, public research university in Athens, Georgia. It was founded in 1859, making it one of the oldest American university law ...

. A graduate of the

University of Florida The University of Florida (Florida or UF) is a public university, public land-grant university, land-grant research university in Gainesville, Florida, United States. It is a senior member of the State University System of Florida and a preem ...

(

B.A. A Bachelor of Arts (abbreviated B.A., BA, A.B. or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is the holder of a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the liberal arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree ...

, 1965; J.D., 1969) Wilkes became professor of law at the University of Georgia in 1971. He was a member of the

State Bar of Georgia The State Bar of Georgia is the governing body of the legal profession in the State of Georgia, operating under the supervision of the Supreme Court of Georgia. Membership is a condition of admission to practice law in Georgia. The State Bar w ...

starting in 1972 and in 1975–1976 was a fellow in Law and the Humanities at

Harvard University Law School Harvard Law School (HLS) is the law school of Harvard University, a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1817, Harvard Law School is the oldest law school in continuous operation in the United States. Each class ...

. An authority on the law of

Habeas corpus ''Habeas corpus'' (; from Medieval Latin, ) is a legal procedure invoking the jurisdiction of a court to review the unlawful detention or imprisonment of an individual, and request the individual's custodian (usually a prison official) to ...

, Wilkes's work ''State Postconviction Remedies and Relief Handbook'' was cited by the

U.S. Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that turn on question ...

in the case ''Wall v. Kholi'' 131 S.Ct. 1278 (U.S. 2011). Wilkes is credited with the introduction of the term

New Federalism New Federalism is a political philosophy of devolution, or the transfer of certain powers from the United States federal government back to the states. The primary objective of New Federalism, unlike that of the eighteenth-century political philo ...

in relation to criminal procedure in the United States in a series of essays in the ''Kentucky law Journal'' in the mid 1970s. Wilkes retired from University of Georgia School of Law in 2012. He died, aged 74, on June 7, 2019.

References

1944 births 2019 deaths People from Daytona Beach, Florida Georgia (U.S. state) lawyers Fredric G. Levin College of Law alumni University of Georgia faculty Harvard Law School faculty American legal scholars 20th-century American lawyers {{US-legal-academic-bio-stub