Trevor Morrison is Of Counsel at Kaplan Hecker & Fink. He is also the Eric M. and Laurie B. Roth Professor of Law and Dean Emeritus at New York University School of Law.
Trevor’s areas of expertise include constitutional law, Supreme Court and appellate litigation, administrative law, and federal courts and federal jurisdiction. He has represented individuals and institutions in federal court in complex civil, civil rights, and criminal matters, and he has filed briefs in numerous appeals at the U.S. Supreme Court and intermediate appellate levels, addressing issues of federal regulatory, statutory and constitutional law. He has advised large institutions on a similar range of issues in order to help them comply with complex and shifting legal requirements. Trevor is also called upon to file expert reports with foreign tribunals addressing a range of issues of American law and procedure. Trevor was part of the legal team that successfully represented writer E. Jean Carroll in her sexual battery and defamation suits against Donald Trump, securing two substantial jury verdicts of $5 million and $83.3 million, respectively—both after under three hours of deliberations.
In his scholarly work, Trevor has published numerous books, chapters, and articles on a broad range of topics including the constitutional separation of powers, federalism, preemption, statutory interpretation, habeas corpus, tort reform, and criminal law. His writing has appeared in the Yale Law Journal, the Harvard Law Review, the NYU Law Review and the Columbia Law Review, among others.
Trevor served as the Dean of NYU School of Law from 2013 to 2022, and previously served on the faculties of Columbia Law School and Cornell Law School.
During his tenure as Dean, Trevor led NYU Law through the development and implementation of a far-reaching strategic plan that dramatically increased student financial aid; strengthened the loan repayment assistance program for graduates working in public interest; deepened the strength of the law school’s faculty across the curriculum; launched 15 new research centers in a wide range of areas; established new interdisciplinary degree programs including a Masters of Science in Cybersecurity; and created a new assistant deanship for diversity and inclusion. To support these and other efforts, Trevor led a record-breaking fundraising campaign, which raised more than $540 million.
Trevor clerked for the Hon. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the U.S. Supreme Court and the Hon. Betty B. Fletcher of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He has served in the U.S. Department of Justice as a Bristow Fellow in the Office of the Solicitor General and as an Attorney-Advisor in Office of Legal Counsel. In addition, Trevor served as Associate Counsel to President Barack Obama in 2009 and was later appointed by President Obama to serve on the Public Interest Declassification Board from 2016 to 2020. In 2021, President Biden appointed Trevor to the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States. In 2023, President Biden appointed Trevor to the Permanent Committee for the Oliver Wendell Holmes Devise.
Trevor’s leadership and excellence in legal education and law practice have been widely acknowledged. In 2022 he was awarded the President’s Distinguished Leadership Award by the NYU Law Alumni of Color Association. The Columbia Law School Class of 2011 awarded Trevor the Willis L.M. Reese Prize for Excellence in Teaching, and in 2008 he received the Association of the Bar of the City of New York’s Thurgood Marshall Award for Capital Representation.
Trevor received his J.D. from Columbia Law School, where he was a James Kent Scholar and a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar. He received his B.A., with honors, from the University of British Columbia, where he received the Reid Medal for being the top graduate in the History Honors Program. Trevor also studied Japanese History at Columbia University and at Sophia University in Tokyo.
Trevor was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2016 and is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the American Law Institute.
Select Publications
- Co-author, “ESG and Fiduciaries: A New Age Dawns,” Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance (2023)
