Samuel Bagenstos, G. Rollie White Public Interest Scholar in Residence
About Samuel Bagenstos:
Samuel Bagenstos is the Frank G. Millard Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School and the Arlene Susan Kohn Professor of Social Policy at the University of Michigan Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy. He recently returned to Michigan after a four-year leave serving in the federal government. From June 2022 to December 2024, he was General Counsel to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and from Inauguration Day 2021 to June 2022, he served as General Counsel to the Office of Management and Budget. In an earlier stint on leave from Michigan, from 2009 to 2011, Bagenstos was an appointee in the US Department of Justice, where he served as the Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, the No. 2 official in the Civil Rights Division. As an academic, Bagenstos has published articles in the Yale Law Journal, the Stanford Law Review, the Columbia Law Review, the California Law Review, the Virginia Law Review, the Cornell Law Review, the Georgetown Law Journal, and many others. He also has published two books: Law and the Contradictions of the Disability Rights Movement (Yale University Press, 2009) and Disability Rights Law: Cases and Materials (Foundation Press, 2010); he is now working on the fourth edition of the latter. Additionally, he has written articles for nonacademic audiences in publications such as Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, the American Prospect, the Washington Monthly, Slate, and the New Republic. Bagenstos frequently consults with civil rights organizations and has been an active appellate and US Supreme Court litigator in civil rights, labor, and health law cases. He has argued four cases before the US Supreme Court, including Young v. United Parcel Service, 575 U.S. 206 (2015), which established new protections for pregnant workers, and United States v. Georgia, 546 U.S. 151 (2006), which upheld, as applied to his client’s case, the constitutionality of Title II of the ADA. And he has argued multiple times in the Michigan Supreme Court and the federal courts of appeals.
He is actively involved in public and community affairs, both in Ann Arbor and statewide. Pursuant to an appointment by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, he served as chair of the Michigan Employment Relations Commission, the state agency that enforces the rights of public employees to unionize and collectively bargain. Pursuant to an appointment by Mayor Christopher Taylor, he served as a member of the Ann Arbor Housing Commission. He has also been a frequent cooperating attorney with the ACLU of Michigan.
About the G. Rollie Public Interest Scholar in Residence program:
Bagenstos’ visit to Texas Law as a G. Rollie White Public Interest Scholar in Residence is supported by a generous gift from the G. Rollie White Trust. The program brings outstanding legal scholars, practitioners and advocates from the field of public service to Texas Law to foster discussion of issues related to public interest law, to raise the profile of lawyers working in this area, and to encourage students to view public service as an honored and expected part of every legal career. Simms is Texas Law’s twelfth G. Rollie White Public Interest Scholar in Residence.
Contact Information:
Liza Soria (Center Coordinator/Event Organizer)
liza.soria@law.utexas.edu