Michael Tigar Related seminars and products: 64

Michael Tigar’s quest for justice stretches his arms toward perfectness.
William Brennan, Jr.
Associate Justice of the Supreme Court 1956-90

The ballot for Lawyer of the Century was held by the California Attorneys for Criminal Justice. Clarence Darrow and Thurgood Marshall were second and third in the balloting.

Tigar is a professor at Duke University Law School and American University’s Washington College of Law. He had full-time academic positions at UCLA and the University of Texas. He is a 1966 graduate of Boalt Hall, University of California, Berkeley, where he was first in his class, law review editor-in-chief and Order of the Coif.

Tigar has argued seven cases in the U.S. Supreme Court, argued more than 100 federal appeals, and litigated in 23 states and several foreign countries.

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Tigar has authored or co-authored 13 books, three plays and scores of articles and essays. State and Monopoly Power are myths. There are nine principles of litigation. Thinking about terrorism. Fighting Injustice is his memoir. Examining witnesses. There is persuasion.

The Michael Tigar Papers, an event at the University of Texas at Austin in 2018, honored Michael’s work and his works, including discussions of his major cases by Fernando Chavez, Jeremy Corbyn and Patrick Higginbotham, as well as two scenes from his play Haymarket: Whose

Mr. Tigar has clients that include H. Rap Brown, John Connally, The Washington Post, Fantasy Films, Allen Ginsberg, Fernando Chavez, and Lynne Stewart. He is a past chair of the American Bar Association’s Section of Litigation and a past chair of the Texas Resource Center for Capital Litigation.

He has taught law students in clinical programs where students are counsel or law clerks in significant human rights litigation. Tigar and his colleagues recreated the trial of Clarence Darrow in order to commemorate the founding of Santa Clara law school. He has made several trips to South Africa, working with organizations of African lawyers engaged in the struggle to end apartheid, and after the release of Nelson Mandela from prison, to lecture on human rights issues and to advise the African National Congress on issues in drafting a new constitution. Tigar is involved in efforts to bring to justice members of the Pinochet dictatorship.

The Texas Civil Rights Project purchased a building in Austin, Texas, in 2003 and named it the Michael Tigar Human Rights Center.