Theodore M. Shaw

Theodore M. Shaw is the Associate Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF), is the nation's oldest legal organization fighting for equal rights under the law. (Established in 1940 under the direction of the late Thurgood Marshall, LDF initially was an independent litigation arm of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People; the two groups separated entirely in 1957). He has litigated civil rights cases throughout the country on the trial and appellate levels, and in the U. S. Supreme Court.

Mr. Shaw is a native of New York City, where he attended Cardinal Spellman High School in the Bronx. He graduated from Wesleyan University with honors and from the Columbia University School of Law, where he was a Charles Evans Hughes Fellow.

Upon graduation, Mr. Shaw worked as a trial attorney in the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice from September, 1979 until March of 1982, in Washington D.C. He litigated school desegregation and housing discrimination cases, and was awarded a special commendation for outstanding service to the Civil Rights Division. He resigned from the Justice Department in Protest of the Reagan Administration's civil rights policies.

From March of 1982, when he first joined the LDF, until October of 19987, Mr. Shaw directed LDF's education docket and litigated school desegregation, capital punishment, First Amendment , and other civil rights cases in trial and appellate courts throughout the country. In October of 1987, he relocated to Los Angeles to establish a Western Regional Office of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, where he served as Western Regional Counsel. There he litigated housing discrimination, voting rights and other civil rights cases. In 1990, Mr. Shaw left LDF to join the faculty of the University of Michigan Law School, where he taught Constitutional Law, Civil Procedure, and Civil Rights. In 1993, on a leave of absence from Michigan, he rejoined LDF as Associate Director-Counsel.

Mr. Shaw has testified before Congress and before state legislatures on numerous occasions. He also has extensive international experience. In 1993, he participated in a conference on affirmative action in post-apartheid South Africa in East London, South Africa. In 1994 and 1995, he led delegations of Legal Defense Fund Lawyers to South Africa where they conducted seminars on constitutional litigation. In 1994, Mr. Shaw addressed and consulted with the Senate Judiciary Committee of the Spanish Parliament and a select group of Spanish Judges in Madrid, Spain on the subject of American Law in Salzburg, Austria, and in 1989, he was a fellow in the Twenty-First Century Trust's Seminar on Global Interdependence held at Great Windsor Park in England. In the U.S., he was also an Aspen Fellow in the summer, 1987 session on Law and American Society in Aspen, Colorado.