Law school commencement features former national security advisor

Neal Katyal, an expert in matters of constitutional law and a former national security advisor in the U.S. Justice Department, will be the speaker at the law school commencement ceremony on May 19.

Katyal is perhaps best known for winning the U.S. Supreme Court case Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, which challenged the policy of military trials at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Station, Cuba. The Supreme Court sided with Katyal by a 5-3 vote, finding that President Bush’s tribunals violated the constitutional separation of powers, domestic military law, and international law.

Katyal was also Vice President Al Gore’s cocounsel in the U.S. 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.

Named Lawyer of the Year in 2006 by Lawyers USA, Katyal has been presented with the ACLU Foundation’s Roger Baldwin Award and the National Law Journal pro bono award for his work.

Watch Neal Katyal’s 2008 appearance on Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report.