For Immediate Release
December 18, 2006
Contact:
Elissa Free
Kara Tershel, (202) 662-9500
WASHINGTON, D.C. - To recognize his role as lead attorney in the landmark Supreme Court case Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, Georgetown University Law Center Professor Neal Katyal has received numerous honors from the national legal community for the year 2006.
The National Law Journal has named him a "Lawyer of the Year Runner-Up", Lawyers USA newspaper has selected him as a "Lawyer of the Year" and LawDragon magazine has chosen Katyal as one of its "500 Leading Lawyers in America".
"Neal Katyal is an exceptional scholar, teacher and practitioner, whose talents reach far beyond the classroom," said T. Alexander Aleinikoff, Georgetown Law Dean. "His leadership in this historic case has earned him these well-deserved honors."
Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, a challenge to the military tribunals set up by President Bush to try detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, "has been described by one constitutional law scholar as 'perhaps the most important separation-of-powers decision ever'", writes the National Law Journal. The court ruled 5-3 that the military commissions violated military and international law.
The Journal goes on to say, "For Katyal, who made his first high court appearance in Hamdan, the decision was the pinnacle of an extraordinary odyssey that has taken him from the classroom to Guantanamo Bay to the federal courts to the halls of Congress to the U.S. Supreme Court and back as the government now seeks to apply a new military commission law to the federal court cases of Hamdan and other detainees."
In 2000, Katyal served as co-counsel for Vice President Al Gore in the 2000 election dispute. He also represented uniformed military Judge Advocate General’s Corps officers in the 2004 Supreme Court case Rasul v. Bush, Justice Joseph Grodin in the recent Supreme Court case on the Pledge of Allegiance and a group of private law school deans in the high court’s landmark affirmative action case Grutter v. Bollinger.
Katyal is an expert in national security law, the U.S. Constitution, criminal law and the Geneva Conventions.
Before coming to Georgetown in 1997, he was a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer and Judge Guido Calabresi of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. In 1998-99, Katyal served as National Security Adviser to the Deputy Attorney General at the Department of Justice. He was commissioned by President Clinton in 1999 to co-author a report on the ways the legal profession can enhance its pro bono activities and diversify the bar. In 2004, the National Law Journal awarded him their annual pro bono award in recognition of his work. Katyal has been a visiting professor at Harvard and Yale law schools.
About Georgetown University Law Center
Georgetown University Law Center is one of the world's premier law schools. It has the largest full-time faculty in the nation and is pre-eminent in several areas, including constitutional, international, tax and clinical law. Drawing on its Jesuit heritage, it has a strong tradition of public service and is dedicated to the principle that law is but a means, justice is the end. With this principle in mind, Georgetown Law has built an environment that cultivates an exchange of ideas and the pursuit of academic excellence. It brings together an extraordinarily varied group of teachers, scholars and practitioners, as well as an outstanding student body.
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