User:Butterflyhighinsky/Theodore M. Shaw

Theodore M. Shaw is the former Director-Counsel and President of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. Theodore M. Shaw is Director-Counsel and President of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF), the nation's premier civil rights law firm. In 2004, Shaw became the fifth person to lead the organization in its 64-year history. Currently, he serves as a Professor of Law at Columbia Law School.

Shaw's formative years were shaped by both the Black consciousness and civil rights movement. Shaw joined LDF in 1982 where he directed LDF's education docket and litigated school desegregation, capital punishment, and other civil rights cases throughout the country. In 1987, he moved to California to help establish LDF's Western Regional Office. In 1990, he 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. While at LDF, he helped significantly shape the national debate around affirmative action.

Shaw graduated from Wesleyan University with honors and from the Columbia University School of Law. Upon graduation, Shaw worked as a trial attorney in the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice in 1979. In 1982, Shaw resigned from the Justice Department in protest of the Reagan Administration's civil rights policies.