Theodore Shaw:  2009 NCCU School of Law Graduation Ceremony Keynote Speaker

Co-Chair Obama Transition Team for the U.S. Department of Justice

Past President and Director Counsel, NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund

Professor of Law, Columbia University School of Law

Theodore M. Shaw is the past President and Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund; a position once held by Thurgood Marshall.  Most recently, Ted Shaw served as Co-Chair of President –Elect Barack Obama’s Transition Team for the U.S. Department of Justice. 

Having argued several cases before the United States Supreme Court, Ted Shaw is widely considered to be a national leader and expert in the area of law and civil rights.   

While at the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, Shaw was involved in numerous landmark cases, including as lead counsel in a coalition that represented African-American and Latino students in the University of Michigan undergraduate affirmative action admissions case. In 2003, the United States Supreme Court heard Gratz v. Bollinger and Grutter v. Bollinger, that challenged the use of affirmative action at the University of Michigan Law School.

Shaw worked as a trial attorney in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. from 1979–1982, litigating civil rights cases throughout the country at the trial and appellate levels and at the U.S. Supreme Court. Shaw currently serves on the Legal Advisory Network of the European Roma Rights Council, based in Budapest, Hungary.

Shaw graduated from Columbia Law School in 1979. He had graduated from Wesleyan University with honors. Among his honors and awards are the Lawrence A.Wein Prize for Social Justice given by Columbia Law School, the National Bar Association Young Lawyers Division’s A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr. Memorial Award. He has served on both Columbia Law’s Board of Visitors and the Wesleyan University Board of Trustees. He has previously taught at the University of Michigan Law School, Temple Law School, CUNY School of Law, and as a lecturer in law at Columbia Law School.  Shaw is now a professor of law at Columbia University School of Law.