Leaders in Law

National Legal Director, American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)

Tuesday, September 1, 2026
5:30 - 6:45 p.m.
MSU Mulitcultural Center

Cecillia Wang is the National Legal Director of American Civil Liberties Union. She manages over 200 staff in the ACLU’s national legal department and leads the ACLU’s work in the Supreme Court of the United States.

Cecillia’s notable ACLU matters include: a Supreme Court argument concerning interpretation of a federal immigration statute that requires detention of noncitizen in removal proceedings without an individualized custody hearing; a victory before the en banc Fourth Circuit in a challenge to an executive order barring the entry of nationals of several predominantly Muslim countries; a victory before the en banc Ninth Circuit in a constitutional challenge to an Arizona state constitutional amendment prohibiting pretrial release of criminal defendants deemed to be undocumented immigrants; a victory in the Eleventh Circuit in a challenge to an Alabama state anti-immigrant law; and two trial victories in a Section 1983 case challenging racial profiling and unlawful traffic stops by the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office and a subsequent civil contempt proceeding.

Cecillia is a past director of the ACLU’s Center for Democracy and ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project. Between starting her civil rights career at the ACLU as a fellow in 1997-98 and returning as a staff attorney in 2004, Cecillia was a trial attorney in the federal public defender office for the Southern District of New York, worked at the San Francisco law firm Keker & Van Nest, LLP, and served on the federal Criminal Justice Act indigent defense panel for the Northern District of California. Cecillia is a 1995 graduate of Yale Law School, where she was an Articles Editor on the Yale Law Journal and participated in the Lowenstein Human Rights Clinic and Immigration Clinic. She clerked for Judge William Norris on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and for Supreme Court Justices Harry Blackmun and Stephen Breyer.

October 12, 2026
12:15 - 1:15 PM
Castle Board Room

Richard Pildes is one of the nation’s leading scholars of constitutional law and a specialist in legal issues concerning democracy. A former law clerk to Justice Thurgood Marshall, he has been elected into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Law Institute, and has also received recognition as a Guggenheim Fellow and a Carnegie Scholar. President Biden appointed him to the President’s Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States. In dozens of articles and his acclaimed casebook, The Law of Democracy, he has helped create an entirely new field of study in the law schools. His work in this field systematically explores legal and policy issues concerning the structure of democratic elections and institutions, such as the role of money in politics, the design of election districts, the regulation of political parties, the structure of voting systems, the representation of minority interests in democratic institutions, and similar issues. He has written on the rise of political polarization in the United States, the transformation of the presidential nominations process, the Voting Rights Act (including editing a book titled The Future of the Voting Rights Act), the dysfunction of America’s political processes, the role of the Supreme Court in overseeing American democracy, and the powers of the American President and Congress. In addition to his scholarship in these areas, he has written on national-security law, the design of the regulatory state, and American constitutional history and theory. As a lawyer, Pildes has successfully argued voting-rights and election-law cases before the United States Supreme Court and the courts of appeals, and as a well-known public commentator, he writes frequently for The New York Times, The Washington Post, and was part of the Emmy-nominated NBC breaking-news team for coverage of the 2000 Bush v. Gore contest.

February 11, 2027
5:30 - 6:30 PM
Wharton Center, Jackson Lounge

Harold Hongju Koh is Sterling Professor of International Law at Yale Law School. He returned to Yale Law School in January 2013 after serving for nearly four years as the 22nd Legal Adviser of the U.S. Department of State.

Professor Koh is one of the country’s leading experts in public and private international law, national security law, and human rights. He first began teaching at Yale Law School in 1985 and served as its fifteenth Dean from 2004 until 2009. From 2009 to 2013, he took leave as the Martin R. Flug ’55 Professor of International Law to join the State Department as Legal Adviser, service for which he received the Secretary of State's Distinguished Service Award. From 1993 to 2009, he was the Gerard C. & Bernice Latrobe Smith Professor of International Law at Yale Law School, and from 1998 to 2001, he served as U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor.

Professor Koh has received 18 honorary degrees and more than 30 awards for his human rights work, including awards from Columbia Law School and the American Bar Association for his lifetime achievements in international law. He has authored or co-authored nine books, published more than 200 articles, testified regularly before Congress, and litigated numerous cases involving international law issues in both U.S. and international tribunals. He is a Fellow of the American Philosophical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, an Honorary Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, and a member of the Council of the American Law Institute.

He holds a B.A. degree from Harvard College and B.A. and M.A. degrees from Oxford University, where he was a Marshall Scholar. He earned his J.D. from Harvard Law School, where he was Developments Editor of the Harvard Law Review. Before coming to Yale, he served as a law clerk for Justice Harry A. Blackmun of the United States Supreme Court and Judge Malcolm Richard Wilkey of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, worked as an attorney in private practice in Washington, and served as an Attorney-Adviser for the Office of Legal Counsel, U.S. Department of Justice.

Spring 2027
12:15 - 1:15 PM
Castle Board Room

Barbara McQuade is a professor from practice at the University of Michigan Law School, where she teaches courses in criminal law, criminal procedure, and national security.  She is also a legal analyst for MS NOW. She is a co-host of the podcast #SistersInLaw and the author of two New York Times bestsellers, The Fix: Saving America from the Sabotage of a Mob-Style Government, and Attack from Within: How Disinformation is Sabotaging America.

From 2010 to 2017, Ms. McQuade served as the U.S Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan. Ms. McQuade was appointed by President Barack Obama and was the first woman to serve in her position. During her career, Ms. McQuade has also served as an assistant U.S. attorney, an attorney in private practice, a law clerk to a federal district court judge, and a sportswriter. She is a graduate of the University of Michigan (LSA ’87 and Law ’91). She and her husband have four children and live in Ann Arbor.

Ms. McQuade has been recognized by the Detroit News with its Michiganian of the Year Award, the Detroit Free Press with its Neal Shine Award for Exceptional Leadership, and Crain’s Detroit Business as one of Detroit’s Most Powerful Women.