Drew S. Days III is Of Counsel to Morrison & Foerster LLP. Mr. Days served as Solicitor General of the United States from 1993 to 1996 and joined Morrison & Foerster in 1997.
Mr. Days has successfully argued many cases before the Supreme Court of the United States, touching upon such diverse subjects as international tax, military and criminal law, and civil rights. He has argued 24 cases before the Supreme Court of the United States in total, 17 of those cases as Solicitor General, and oversaw a group of lawyers who made more than 180 appearances. In the Supreme Court,, Mr. Days argued a financial markets case involving the Commodity Exchange Act, Klein & Co. Futures Inc. v. Board of Trade, 127 S. Ct. 2431 (2007), which was dismissed by the parties prior to a ruling by the Court under Supreme Court rule 46.1. He was recently honored as one of the "50 Most Influential Minority Lawyers" by the National Law Journal.
Mr. Days began his career at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in New York City, where he spent eight years litigating cases in the areas of school desegregation, police misconduct, and employment discrimination. In 1977, President Jimmy Carter nominated him to serve as the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights in the United States Department of Justice. His tenure was marked by an aggressive enforcement of the nation's civil rights laws in a number of areas, including police misconduct and unlawful discrimination in employment, housing, voting, and education.
Mr. Days served in the Department of Justice until 1981, when he joined the faculty of the Yale Law School. In 1991 he was named the Alfred M. Rankin Professor at the Law School. At Yale his teachings and writings have focused on civil procedure, federal jurisdiction, antidiscrimination law, comparative constitutional law, and international human rights. He was also the founding director of the Orville H. Schell Jr. Center for Human Rights at Yale Law School. Mr. Days continues to serve as a professor at the Yale Law School.
Mr. Days participates in many of the leading national legal and policy organizations: he serves as a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Fellow of the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers, and a Life Fellow of the American Bar Foundation, as well as a member of the American Law Institute, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Inter-American Dialogue. Mr. Days is also a member of the Scholarly Advisory Council of the Smithsonian Museum of African-American History and Culture.
Mr. Days is currently involved in national and international efforts to resolve many of our most critical social, economic, and environmental issues. A member of the Board of Directors of The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation from 1996 to 2008, Mr. Days served as Chair of the Program on Human & Community Development, and in 2007, he embarked on a trip to New Orleans to study first-hand the devastating effects of Hurricane Katrina on low- and middle-income housing communities. Working with the MacArthur Foundation "Window of Opportunity" program, he helped further the efforts to provide funding for the builders and developers of affordable rental housing.
Mr. Days' efforts also reach more broadly, including his participation in "Model for Change," a national network created by the Foundation to evaluate programs and identify solutions for the broken juvenile justice system. Also of concern are problems surrounding the incarceration of juveniles and the disproportionate number of minorities, mainly African Americans and Latinos, in our nation's correctional system.
Mr. Days' commitment also extends to the welfare of the environment. In 2007, he traveled with a MacArthur Foundation team to the Arctic Circle to see the effects of climate change. Mr. Days met with officials of the Manitoban provincial government, members of Native Canadian tribal groups, and scientists. This trip was in connection with the Foundation's world-wide environmental work in the Southern Hemisphere where they monitor environmental issues that have major impact on their programs.
Mr. Days' extensive publications include two volumes on the Supreme Court of the United States in the third edition of Moore's Federal Practice, a leading treatise on federal court practice and procedure. He is also co-author (along with two partners from the firm's San Francisco office) of "Arbitration and Litigation: Enforceability and Access to the Courts" in Business and Commercial Litigation in the Federal Courts, (2005, ABA Section of Litigation), a comprehensive treatment of the subject.
Mr. Days is an honors graduate of Hamilton College and received his LL.B. from Yale Law School. Upon graduation, he first practiced law in Chicago and then spent two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in Honduras.