About
Daniel J. Canon is a civil rights lawyer, educator, writer, and activist based in the Midwest. He is Director of Externships and Professor of Law at the Louis D. Brandeis School of Law, where he teaches courses on civil rights and civil procedure. His research is focused primarily on collective action, the criminal legal system, and the role of the courts in preventing election violence.
Dan is currently of counsel to Saeed & Little, LLP, and has consistently been voted one of the region's top lawyers in the area of individual/constitutional rights for over a decade. He served as lead counsel for the Kentucky plaintiffs in the landmark Supreme Court case of Obergefell v. Hodges, which brought marriage equality to all fifty states. He was also plaintiffs' counsel in Miller v. Davis, the highly publicized case in which couples were refused marriage licenses in Rowan County, Kentucky, and counsel for protesters in Nwanguma v. Trump. He has represented plaintiffs in many other high-profile cases involving the rights of incarcerated people, wrongful convictions, and police brutality. He is licensed to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court, the Sixth, Seventh, and Ninth Circuit Courts of Appeals, federal courts in Illinois, Indiana, and Kentucky, and state courts in Kentucky and Indiana.
His writing has been featured in numerous publications, including The Washington Post, The National Law Journal, Above the Law, Salon, Truthout, and Slate. His bestselling book entitled PLEADING OUT: How Plea Bargaining Creates a Permanent Criminal Class, is now available.