Event

September 9, 2010
Chappell's Grill, North Kansas City

 Kannon Shanmugam is a partner focusing on Supreme Court and appellate litigation.  He has argued nine cases before the Supreme Court;  recently, he argued Hawaii v. Office of Hawaiian Affairs, which concerned the validity of an injunction barring the State of Hawaii from selling public lands held in trust for Native Hawaiians.

Mr. Shanmugam joined Williams & Connolly after serving as an Assistant to the Solicitor General in the Department of Justice.  While in that capacity, he successfully argued Tellabs v. Makor Rights, which concerned the standard for pleading state of mind in a federal securities-fraud action; Weyerhaeuser v. Ross-Simmons, which involved the standard for a claim of predatory bidding under the federal antitrust laws; and Ali v. Federal Bureau of Prisons, which concerned the availability of a claim for damages by a federal prisoner for lost personal property.  In addition, he was responsible for preparing the briefs of the United States in a number of other significant cases, including Stoneridge Investment Partners v. Scientific-Atlanta, a case involving the availability of “scheme liability” under the federal securities laws; United States v. Atlantic Research, a case concerning the availability of actions for reimbursement of environmental cleanup costs under the

Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act; and Arthur Andersen v. United States, an appeal by Arthur Andersen from its conviction for obstruction of justice in connection with the collapse of Enron.

Before joining the Justice Department, Mr. Shanmugam was an associate at the law firm of Kirkland & Ellis, where he worked with former U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Kenneth W. Starr on a range of appellate matters, including a number of matters in the Supreme Court.  Most notably, he was responsible for preparing the briefs on behalf of Senator Mitch McConnell and other challengers to the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance law in McConnell v. FEC.  He also represented the plaintiffs in Granholm v. Heald, a lawsuit challenging a state law prohibiting the direct shipment of wine to consumers.

Mr. Shanmugam was born in Lawrence, Kansas, the son of Indian immigrants.  He grew up in Kansas and was co-valedictorian of his class at Lawrence High School.  He went to Harvard at age 16, where he majored in classics and graduated summa cum laude.  After being selected as a Marshall Scholar, he obtained a master’s degree in classics from the University of Oxford.  He then returned to Harvard Law School and graduated magna cum laude in 1998; there, he served as executive editor of the Harvard Law Review and argued the case for the winning side in the moot court competition.  After law school, he served as a law clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia on the United States Supreme Court and Judge J. Michael Luttig on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.