For Immediate Release
May 5, 2005

Contact:
Elissa Free, (202) 662-9500

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Georgetown Law Professor Neal Katyal has been named one of the leading "40 lawyers under 40" by the National Law Journal. "Not only is Neal Katyal a young professor at a top-tier law school, he is also involved in a few of the significant cases of the decade," writes the Journal.  

Katyal, 34, is the lead attorney in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, a federal challenge to the military tribunals set up by President Bush at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. In 2000, Katyal served as co-counsel for Vice President Al Gore in the U.S. Supreme Court election case Bush v. Palm Beach Canvassing Board, which challenged the Florida voting system. And he filed an amicus brief in the Supreme Court involving the Pledge of Allegiance and an amicus brief for a group of private law school deans in the high court's landmark affirmative action case, Grutter v. Bollinger.

 The Journal chose 40 top young attorneys who showed evidence of "extraordinary achievements early on in their careers" and who they expect to "continue to exert influence in the legal profession."  The paper also honored Katyal with its Pro Bono Award last year.

Katyal, the 2004 John Carroll Research Professor of Law at Georgetown, is an expert in national security law, the American constitution, and the Geneva Conventions. His other interests include computer crime, presidential power, slavery and affirmative action, and education law.

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. 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, the Law Center 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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