Lucas Guttentag

Lucas Guttentag has been one of the leading figures in immigration law and immigrants’ rights in the United States for more than thirty years.  He is now Professor of the Practice of Law at Stanford Law School and Martin R. Flug Lecturer in Law and Senior Research Scholar at Yale Law School. He is the founder and former national director of the American Civil Liberties Union Immigrants’ Rights Project (IRP), which he led from 1985-2010.  From 2014 to 2016, he served in the Obama administration as a senior advisor on immigration policy, including as Senior Counselor to the Secretary of Homeland Security.  He was a law clerk to federal judge William Wayne Justice in Texas and is a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley and Harvard Law School.
Guttentag speaks and writes on the intersection of civil rights and immigration law, He has litigated many major cases throughout the United States on behalf of non-citizens, testified before Congress, and argued successfully in the California Supreme Court and the United States Supreme Court. He is a member of the American Law Institute (ALI), the recipient of an honorary degree from CUNY Law School, a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation, listed among the Lawdragon 500 Leading Lawyers in America, and named a “human rights hero” by the American Bar Association Human Rights journal. He has been recognized for his litigation and advocacy by many national and community-based organizations, including receiving the American Immigration Lawyers Association top litigation award four times, the National Lawyers Guild immigration litigation award, California Lawyer’s appellate “Lawyer of the Year” award, listed among the Top 100 lawyers in Northern California, and designated one of the country’s top 25 immigrant advocates of the last 25 years in 2007. Guttentag has served as board member of numerous non-profit entities and advises non-profit, philanthropic, business, and governmental entities on legal and policy issues.