by Anne Marie Gattari
When Cecillia Wang looks back on 30 years as a lawyer, she can see a career path that, at the time, was anything but clear.
The National Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union told Michigan State University College of Law students Tuesday, Sept. 1 , that she has followed two rules throughout her career and that they have served her well:
“Follow the people you respect and want to work with, and don’t assume that any career decision will be your last one,” Wang said during the inaugural Leaders in Law event at MSU Law. Dean Michael Sant’Ambrogio moderated the evening’s conversation.
That perspective has guided her through her positions as a federal public defender, a private-practice attorney, an ACLU fellow and staff attorney, and director of the ACLU’s Center for Democracy and Immigrants’ Rights Project. She has argued before the U.S. Supreme Court and served as a law clerk to Judge William Norris of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and Supreme Court Justices Harry Blackmun and Stephen Breyer.
Today, Wang manages more than 200 lawyers and other staff in the ACLU’s national legal department and leads the organization’s Supreme Court work.
But her message to students was less about reaching a particular position than about finding a way to do meaningful work.
‘What does the mission mean to you?’
Wang described the ACLU as an organization grounded in principles that she said are central to the Constitution: civil liberties, equal justice, due process and the rule of law.
“The rule of law means government officials should be held accountable just like the rest of us,” she said.
She talked about the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the constitution, which emphasizes history and tradition.
For an organization like the ACLU, that change presents both challenges and opportunities.
“We stand for principle and look for opportunities to advance those principles where other organizations aren't in a position to,” Wang said.
She offered the ACLU’s recent Supreme Court victory in United States v. Hemani as an example.
The case involved a federal law making it a felony for an “unlawful user” of a controlled substance to possess a firearm. Ali Hemani, who regularly used marijuana, kept a firearm securely in his home. The government prosecuted him under the statute.
The ACLU joined the case because Wang saw an opportunity to make a broader point about criminal law and incarceration while using the Court’s preferred method of constitutional analysis.
The Court’s history-and-tradition approach, she said, provided a path to challenge a federal criminal prosecution that she believed swept too broadly.
On June 18, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled in Hemani’s favor, holding that the government’s prosecution of him under the statute violated the Second Amendment. (Supreme Court)
For Wang, the case illustrated an important lesson about appellate advocacy: A lawyer needs to understand not only the law and the client’s position, but also how the particular court is approaching constitutional questions.
Arguing for birthright citizenship
Wang’s most recent Supreme Court argument provided another example.
In April, she argued Trump v. Barbara, a challenge to an executive order restricting birthright citizenship. The case turned on the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause and whether children born in the United States to parents who were unlawfully or temporarily present were entitled to citizenship at birth.
The ACLU and its partners argued that the Constitution and longstanding precedent protected birthright citizenship.
Wang told students that the case presented an unusual alignment: The Trump administration was making a policy argument while the ACLU was relying heavily on history and tradition—the very methodology the current Court has emphasized.
“So, this is a weird case,” she said. “Here, Trump is arguing policy, and the ACLU is arguing original meaning.”
The ACLU, she said, had to be attentive to what the Court cared about.
The strategy succeeded. On June 30, the Supreme Court affirmed the lower court’s judgment in a 6-3 decision, holding that children born in the United States to parents who are unlawfully or temporarily present are citizens at birth under the Fourteenth Amendment. Wang had argued for the respondents. (SCOTUSblog)
The work is never finished
Lawyers working on civil-rights issues will inevitably lose cases. Some issues will be politically unpopular. Some communities will be particularly vulnerable to changes in policy or law.
She pointed to legal cases regarding transgender youth as one example of an issue on which many people do not agree with the ACLU’s position.
In those circumstances, she said, lawyers sometimes have to redefine what victory means.
There are cases in which the legal outcome may not be what a lawyer hoped for, but the client knows that the lawyer stood beside them and did everything possible to protect their interests.
Wang ended on a theme that reached beyond any single case or election: Hope, she said, has to be understood over the long term.
The work of protecting civil rights is never finished. There will always be communities that are politically vulnerable and people who find it politically expedient to target a particular group through policymaking or the courts.
A Supreme Court decision can undermine long-standing protections. An election can change the political landscape. A legal victory can later be challenged.
“You will keep going,” she told the students.
There will always be another case, another opportunity, and another generation of lawyers to carry it forward, she said.
She also encouraged students to find hope in historical stories. She recommended the 2013 Pulitzer Prize winner by Gilbert King, “Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys and the Dawn of a New America.”
Leaders in Law Series continues on Monday, October 12, 2026, at 12:30 p.m., when Rick Pildes, an expert on election law, will speak about Voting Rights.