Neal Katyal

Guest Author

Neal Katyal is the Faculty Chair of the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection as well as the Paul and Patricia Saunders Professor of National Security Law at Georgetown University.

He has served as Acting Solicitor General of the United States, where he argued several major Supreme Court cases involving a variety of issues, such as his successful defense of the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, his victorious defense of former Attorney General John Ashcroft for alleged abuses in the war on terror, his unanimous victory against eight states who sued the nation’s leading power plants for contributing to global warming, and a variety of other matters.

As Acting Solicitor General, Katyal was responsible for representing the federal government of the United States in all appellate matters before the U.S. Supreme Court and the Courts of Appeals throughout the nation.  Katyal previously served as National Security Adviser in the U.S. Justice Department and was commissioned by President Clinton to write a report on the need for more legal pro bono work.

He also served as Vice President Al Gore’s co-counsel in the Supreme Court election dispute of 2000, and represented the deans of most major private law schools in the landmark University of Michigan affirmative-action case Grutter v. Bollinger (2003).  Katyal clerked for Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer as well as Judge Guido Calabresi of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.  He attended Dartmouth College and Yale Law School.  His articles have appeared in virtually every major law review and newspaper in America.