Georgetown Law

Cliff Sloan teaches Criminal Justice, Constitutional Law, and Death Penalty Litigation. He joined Georgetown Law as a Dean’s Visiting Scholar in 2019. He has had a wide-ranging career in government, private practice, and media, with a focus on constitutional issues and criminal justice. He has argued seven times in the Supreme Court, including a victory in a major case involving intellectual disability and the death penalty.

Professor Sloan has served in all three branches of the federal government, including as Special Envoy for Guantanamo Closure, Associate Counsel to the President, Assistant to the Solicitor General, Associate Counsel in the Office of Independent Counsel (Iran-Contra), and Executive Assistant to Congressman Sidney Yates. In private practice, he was most recently a partner at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, where he litigated cases at all levels of the federal and state courts. He also has served as Publisher of Slate Magazine and as General Counsel of the Washington Post Company’s online subsidiary.

Professor Sloan has received numerous honors, including the Frederick Douglass Human Rights Award from the Southern Center for Human Rights, the Light of Justice Award from the Texas Defender Service, the Catalyst Award for Legal Advocate of the Year from The Arc, and the Appreciation Award from the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. He serves on the boards of the National Security Archive, the Public Welfare Foundation, and the Southern Center for Human Rights, as well as the American Constitution Society’s Board of Advisors.

Professor Sloan graduated from Harvard College and Harvard Law School (where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review and won the Sears Prize), and then clerked for Judge J. Skelly Wright on the U. S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens. He is the co-author of The Great Decision: Jefferson, Adams, Marshall, and the Battle for the Supreme Court. His book about the Supreme Court during World War II, The Court at War: FDR, His Justices, and the World They Made, will be published in September 2023.