Juliet Sorensen

Who is Juliet Sorensen?

Juliet Sorensen is a Clinical Assistant Professor of Law at Northwestern University School of Law. She was an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Chicago from 2003 to 2010. She has prosecuted City of Chicago inspectors as part of Operation Crooked Code, a bribery investigation into Chicago’s Building and Zoning departments. Between 1995 and 1997, she was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Morocco. Sorensen is a graduate of Princeton University and Columbia Law School. Sorensen is the daughter of Theodore C. Sorensen, the former special counsel to President John F. Kennedy, and the author of Kennedy and Counselor: A Life at the Edge of History, and Gillian M. Sorensen of the United Nations Foundation. She is married to Benjamin Jones, an economist and professor at the Kellogg School of Management.

Sorensen prosecuted Jean-Marie Vianney Mudahinyuka, a leader of the Rwandan genocide. The case is cited as one success of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement No Safe Haven initiative against human rights violators.

In March 2009, the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, in a unanimous panel opinion written by Judge Richard Posner found that Sorensen engaged in Prosecutorial Misconduct and made "a series of improper statements" in the trial court case of U.S. v. Farinella, which was appealed as 558 F.3d 695. A jury had found a Chicago businessman guilty of fraud and misbranding for relabeling 1.6 million bottles of salad dressing to extend their “best when purchased by” date, then reselling the bottles. Judge Posner found that relabeling “best when purchased by” dates was not a crime. Because of her misconduct, and innocent man was convicted of a felony.