Veteran Supreme Court Litigator Brings His Expertise to Stanford

Leading public interest attorney focuses on the separation of powers.

Photo: Steve Gladfelter

Three years ago, Alan Morrison packed up his car and together with his wife embarked on a cross-country trek to teach at Stanford Law School as an Irvine Visiting Fellow. For three semesters, he shared with students his experiences as director of Public Citizen Litigation Group, the Washington, D.C.-based consumer rights advocacy group he cofounded with Ralph Nader in the early 1970s.

Now, as he wraps up his 32-year career at Public Citizen, Morrison is hitting the road once again, this time to join the Stanford faculty as a senior lecturer on administrative and public interest law. Regarded as one of the most respected lawyers to argue before the U.S. Supreme Court, Morrison, 66, specializes in separation-of-powers issues. He has challenged the line-item veto, sentencing guidelines, the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings budget restrictions, and federal preemption of state laws, to name just a few.

Morrison graduated from Yale University in 1959 and Harvard Law School in 1966. He joined Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton in New York as an associate, then worked as an assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York before moving to Public Citizen in 1972. He has been a visiting professor at several law schools, including Harvard, where Kathleen M. Sullivan, Stanley Morrison Professor of Law, was a student in two of his public interest law classes in the late 1970s. One of Sullivan's last acts as dean was enticing Morrison to come to Stanford.

One wouldn't expect a consumer rights champion to be the consummate Beltway insider, but Morrison, who counts at least two Supreme Court Justices as friends, knows how to play on and off the court. Justice Stephen Breyer (BA '59) is a running partner, and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has been a friend for years.

"One thing I've learned in Washington is that you should have no permanent friends and no permanent enemies," said Morrison. "People with whom you disagree may end up agreeing with you when you need them."

—Nina Nowak