Lucas Guttentag
Stanford University · Ethnic Studies
Active 1989–2018
About
Lucas Guttentag is Professor of the Practice of Law at Stanford Law School and one of the nation’s leading experts on immigration law and the rights of non-citizens. His career spans litigation, academia, and government service. He founded the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Immigrants’ Rights Project in 1985 and led it for twenty-five years, establishing it as the country’s premier immigrant justice litigation organization. Guttentag has litigated complex class action and appellate cases on behalf of refugees and non-citizens at every level of the federal judiciary across the United States for three decades. He has served in senior policy positions in the Obama administration at the Department of Homeland Security and in the Biden administration at the Department of Justice. His scholarly and public writings focus on immigration, civil rights, and public policy, and he regularly advises advocates, NGOs, philanthropies, and governmental entities. Guttentag created the Immigration Policy Tracking Project in 2017, a website that tracks immigration policies from the Trump era, which has been profiled in prominent publications. He has argued major cases before the United States Supreme Court, the California Supreme Court, and many other courts, and has testified before Congress. Recognized for his leadership and litigation, he has received numerous awards, including being named appellate lawyer of the year by California Lawyer magazine and litigator of the year by the American Immigration Lawyers Association four times. Guttentag is a member of the American Law Institute and a fellow of the American Bar Foundation. He holds degrees from Harvard Law School and the University of California at Berkeley, and he teaches at Yale Law School as the Martin R. Flug Lecturer in Law and Senior Research Scholar.
Awards & honors
- Inaugural Human Rights Hero by the ABA Human Rights Journal
- Honorary degree from CUNY Law School
- Appellate Lawyer of the Year by California Lawyer magazine
- One of the 500 Leading Lawyers in America by Lawdragon
- Litigator of the Year by the American Immigration Lawyers As…
Similar researchers at Stanford University
- Resume-aware match score
- Save to shortlist
- AI-drafted outreach
See your match with Lucas Guttentag
PhdFit ranks faculty by your research interests, methods, and publications — grounded in their actual work, not templates.
- Free to start
- No credit card
- 30-second signup