For Immediate Release
June 6, 2007

Contact:

Kara Tershel, (202) 662-9500

Professor Neal Katyal

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Georgetown University Law Center Professor Neal Katyal was recognized for his role in the landmark Supreme Court case Hamdan v. Rumsfeld with two awards last week.

Katyal, the lead attorney in the case, and his co-counsel, Navy Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift, were presented the Roger Baldwin Award from the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts Foundation on June 1 and the Salem Award for Human Rights and Social Justice on June 2.

In 2006, the Supreme Court ruled 5-3 in Hamdan that the military tribunals set up by President Bush to try detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, violated military and international law.

Named in honor of the ACLU founder, the Roger Baldwin Award is the ACLU Foundation’s highest honor.  It recognizes individuals for their contributions to the pursuit of civil rights and civil liberties. In presenting the award to Katyal, Harvard Law Professor Charles Ogletree said, "Professor Katyal’s oral argument in Hamdan, if you listen to it, was the most powerful and compelling oral argument since Thurgood Marshall argued Brown v. Board of Education."  Past recipients include civil rights activist Rosa Parks, author Kurt Vonnegut and astronomer Carl Sagan.

The Salem Award was first presented in 1992 on the 300th anniversary of the Salem Witch Trials. The purpose of the award is "to encourage an understanding of the lessons of the Salem Witch Trials in the context of contemporary life." Past awardees include Morris Dees, founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center, Chinese dissident Harry Wu and Jane Schaller, founding president of Physicians for Human Rights.

Katyal received numerous honors from the national legal community for the year 2006 for his work in the Hamdan case. The National Law Journal named him a "Lawyer of the Year Runner-Up", Lawyers USA newspaper selected him as a "Lawyer of the Year" and LawDragon magazine chose him as one of its "500 Leading Lawyers in America".

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.

                                                                                 ##