Lucas Guttentag

Lucas Guttentag
- Professor of the Practice of Law
- Room N362, Neukom Building
Biography
Lucas Guttentag is a national expert on immigration law and immigrants’ rights litigation. He is the founder and former national director of the American Civil Liberties Union Immigrants’ Rights Project, which he led from 1985 to 2011. He has litigated complex civil rights, class action, and constitutional cases in courts throughout the United States, including successfully arguing in the Supreme Court. In 2017, he returned to Stanford Law after serving in the Obama administration, most recently as Senior Counselor to the Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson.
Professor Guttentag’s writings focus on the intersection of civil rights and immigration law. He is a member of the American Law Institute, was named a Human Rights Hero by the ABA Human Rights journal, Appellate Lawyer of the Year by California Lawyer magazine, awarded an honorary degree by CUNY Law School, and is widely recognized by national and community-based organizations for his leadership in the field of immigration law and immigrants’ rights. Professor Guttentag joined the Stanford faculty in 2014 as Professor of the Practice. He also teaches at Yale Law School, where he is Robina Foundation Distinguished Senior Fellow. Before joining the ACLU, he clerked for federal district judge William Wayne Justice in Texas, practiced civil rights law in Los Angeles, and taught at Columbia Law School.
Education
- JD, Harvard Law School
- BA, University of California at Berkeley
Courses

Policy Practicum: Expanding Access to Justice in California Courts for Limited-English Court Users
This policy practicum will offer recommendations to the California Supreme Court Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye, Associate Justice Maria Rivera (First District Court of Appeal), Hon. Manuel Cavarrubius (California Superior Court, County of Ventura) and members of the California Judicial Council to increase access to justice for limited English proficient (LEP) court users. The project interacts with the process of the Joint Working Group for California’s Language Access Plan and assists development of a response to a U.S. Department of Justice notice that certain Court policies and procedures may be inconsistent with Title VI of the Civil Right Act of 1964 and its implementing regulations.
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Biden has started erasing Trump’s legacy. Now the hard part starts.
Washington Post
Even now, Democrats are digging layer by layer through federal orders and manuals — “bureaucratic archaeology,” in the phrase of Lucas Guttentag, a law professor who helped on immigration efforts — in hopes of unearthing buried Trump initiatives. Biden’s allies are bracing for this next phase. “There is an inevitable…
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