Scott Michelman

Scott Michelson's docket as an impact litigator has spanned a broad range of civil rights/civil liberties issues, including access to the courts, discrimination and selective enforcement, freedom of speech and press, habeas corpus, immigrants’ rights, judicial secrecy, political protest, post-September 11 abuse of executive power, privacy rights, religious freedom, the rights of medical marijuana patients, sentencing law, unreasonable search and seizure, and workers’ and consumers’ rights. Michelson is Shikes Fellow on Civil Liberties and Civil Rights and Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School, where he teaches Civil Rights Litigation. He has previously taught as clinical or adjunct faculty at American University Washington College of Law, Santa Clara Law School, Seton Hall Law School, and at the University of California at Santa Cruz. He has been quoted by national radio, television, and print media outlets, including including NPR, CNN, Fox News, Al Jazeera, Democracy Now, the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, U.S. News and World Report, The Independent (U.K.), The New Yorker, Associated Press, Reuters, Politico, Buzzfeed, and National Law Journal, and his commentary and opinion have appeared in SCOTUSblog, Slate and the Huffington Post. Michelson has argued before the United States Supreme Court, six federal courts of appeals, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, and numerous other federal and state courts around the country. Before joining the ACLU-DC, he was an attorney with Public Citizen Litigation Group and with the ACLU Criminal Law Reform Project. Michelson graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review, and he went on to clerk for the Honorable Betty B. Fletcher of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.