Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265 (1978), was a landmark decision by the Supreme Court of the United States that involved a dispute over whether preferential treatment for minorities could reduce educational opportunities for whites without violating the Constitution. It upheld affirmative action, allowing race to be one of several factors in college admission policy. However, the court ruled that specific racial quotas, such as the 16 out of 100 seats set aside for minority students by the University of California, Davis, School of Medicine, were impermissible.
Johnnie Lee Cochran Jr. was an American attorney from California who was involved in numerous civil rights and police brutality cases throughout his 38-year career spanning from 1964 to 2002. Noted for his skill in the courtroom, he is best known for leading the so-called "Dream Team" during the murder trial of O.J. Simpson.
Lewis Franklin Powell Jr. was an American lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1972 to 1987.
The Georgetown University Law Center is the law school of Georgetown University, a private research university in Washington, D.C., United States. It was established in 1870 and is the largest law school in the United States by enrollment, with over 2,000 students. It frequently receives the most full-time applications of any law school in the United States. Georgetown is considered part of the T14, an unofficial designation in the legal community of the best 14 law schools in the United States.
The legal thriller genre is a type of crime fiction genre that focuses on the proceedings of the investigation, with particular reference to the impacts on courtroom proceedings and the lives of characters.
Kirkland & Ellis LLP is an American multinational law firm headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. Founded in 1909, Kirkland & Ellis is the largest law firm in the world by revenue and the seventh-largest by number of attorneys. It was the first law firm in the world to reach US$7 billion in annual revenue.
Roy Black is an American civil and criminal defense trial attorney, he is also a founding partner of Black Srebnick. He is a member of the Trial Lawyer Hall of Fame. He is known for his gaining an acquittal, in 1991, of William Kennedy Smith on charges of rape and for his representation of conservative radio commentator Rush Limbaugh. He gained the only acquittal at trial in the Varsity Blues scandal, that being Amin Khoury, and gained the acquittal of Miami police officer William Lozano in a highly publicized retrial, and whose killing of Clement Lloyd sparked the 1989 Miami riot. He further gained the acquittal of famed racer Hélio Castroneves and his sister on charges of income tax evasion.
Sidley Austin LLP is an American multinational law firm with approximately 2,300 lawyers in 21 offices worldwide. It was established in 1866 and its headquarters is at One South Dearborn in Chicago's Loop. It is one of the largest law firms in the world in terms of revenue. Among its alumni are former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama as well as Vice President-Elect J.D. Vance.
Neal Kumar Katyal is an American lawyer and legal scholar. He is a partner at the Hogan Lovells law firm and is the Paul and Patricia Saunders Professor of National Security Law at Georgetown University Law Center.
Northern Illinois University College of Law is one of four public law schools in the U.S. state of Illinois. It is one of two public law schools in the Chicago area. The College of Law was founded as the Lewis University College of Law in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, in 1975. It became part of Northern Illinois University in August 1979, and in 1982 moved to the DeKalb, Illinois, campus, taking up residence in Swen Parson Hall, the former NIU main library. The College of Law offers the Juris Doctor degree.
The Thurgood Marshall School of Law (TMSL) is an ABA-accredited law school at Texas Southern University in Houston, Texas. It awards Juris Doctor and Master of Law degrees. Thurgood Marshall School of Law is a member-school of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund and Association of American Law Schools.
Paul March Smith is an American attorney who has argued many important cases, most notably Lawrence v. Texas and has argued 21 cases before the Supreme Court of the United States. In January 2017, he joined the faculty at Georgetown University Law Center, and also the Campaign Legal Center in Washington, D.C., as Vice President of Litigation and Strategy. Until 2017, he was a partner at Jenner & Block's Washington, D.C., office where he served as co-chair of the firm's Election Law and Redistricting practice.
Thurgood Marshall Jr. is an American lawyer and son of the late United States Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. Marshall worked in the Bill Clinton White House and is a retired international law firm partner. He also served as chairman of the Board of Governors of the United States Postal Service and as a member of the Board of Trustees of the Ford Foundation.
Mayer Brown is a global white-shoe law firm, founded in Chicago, Illinois, United States. It has offices in 27 cities throughout the Americas, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East, with its largest offices being in Chicago, Washington, D.C., New York City, Hong Kong, and London.
Covington & Burling LLP is an American multinational law firm. Known as a white-shoe law firm, it is headquartered in Washington, D.C., and advises clients on transactional, litigation, regulatory, and public policy matters. The firm has additional offices in Beijing, Boston, Brussels, Dubai, Frankfurt, Johannesburg, London, Los Angeles, New York, Palo Alto, San Francisco, Seoul, and Shanghai.
Dovey Mae Johnson Roundtree was an African-American civil rights activist, ordained minister, and attorney. Her 1955 victory before the Interstate Commerce Commission in the first bus desegregation case to be brought before the ICC resulted in the only explicit repudiation of the "separate but equal" doctrine in the field of interstate bus transportation by a court or federal administrative body. That case, Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach Company, which Dovey Roundtree brought before the ICC with her law partner and mentor Julius Winfield Robertson, was invoked by Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy during the 1961 Freedom Riders' campaign in his successful battle to compel the Interstate Commerce Commission to enforce its rulings and end Jim Crow laws in public transportation.
Elliott I. Portnoy is an American attorney and the global chief executive officer of Dentons—a law firm that launched March 28, 2013 with the combination of US/UKMEA firm SNR Denton, Canada's Fraser Milner Casgrain and France's Salans.
John Patrick "Sean" Coffey is an American attorney, businessman, retired U.S. Navy captain, and political candidate serving as general counsel of the Navy. He led a lawsuit against WorldCom on behalf of investors. In the case, his team recovered over $6 billion from Wall Street banks and responsible parties paid millions of dollars in compensation. Bloomberg Markets dubbed Coffey "Wall Street's New Nemesis." In 2009, Coffey retired from his partnership at Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann to seek the Democratic nomination for New York attorney general; he received 16% of the vote in the primary. In 2011, Coffey co-founded BlackRobe Capital Partners, which closed one and a half years later.
Hogan Lovells is an American-British law firm co-headquartered in London and Washington, DC. The firm was formed in 2010 by the merger of the American law firm Hogan & Hartson and the British law firm Lovells. As of 2024, the firm employed about 2,800 lawyers, making it the sixth largest law firm in the world.
The history of the American legal profession covers the work, training, and professional activities of lawyers from the colonial era to the present. Lawyers grew increasingly powerful in the colonial era as experts in the English common law, which was adopted by the colonies. By the 21st century, over one million practitioners in the United States held law degrees, and many others served the legal system as justices of the peace, paralegals, marshals, and other aides.
