Michael Kimberly is a senior associate in the Supreme Court & Appellate Group in Mayer Brown’s Washington DC office. He has represented parties in more than two dozen cases before the US Supreme Court (including briefing for the parties in six cases on the merits) and a dozen cases before the US Courts of Appeals. Michael has argued appeals before the Second, Seventh, and Ninth Circuits and has expertise in a wide range of substantive areas, with particular focus on statutory interpretation, the antitrust laws, and various aspects of constitutional law (primarily the Commerce Clause, Due Process Clause, and First Amendment).
Among the recent successes in which Michael has been involved are
Georgia-Pacific West, Inc. v. Northwest Environmental Defense Center, 133 S. Ct. 1326 (2013), an environmental law case in which Michael’s briefing helped persuade the Supreme Court to reverse the Ninth Circuit’s decision requiring logging companies to obtain hundreds of thousands of EPA permits for rainwater runoff from forest roads;
In re Volkswagen, Audi Warranty Extension Litigation, 692 F.3d 4 (1st Cir. 2012), a complex
Erie doctrine case in which Michael’s briefing helped convince the First Circuit to overturn a $30 million attorneys’ fee award; and
Shaver v. Siemens Corp., 670 F.3d 462 (3d Cir. 2012), an ERISA case involving questions of statutory interpretation that the Third Circuit described as “hyper complicated.”
As part of his pro bono practice, Michael recently represented 212 Members of Congress as amici supporting the constitutional invalidation of the Defense of Marriage Act before the Supreme Court. He also is involved with the Yale Law School Supreme Court Clinic, which regularly represents indigent clients in civil rights, immigration, and criminal defense matters before the Supreme Court.
Michael is an associate member of the Edward Coke Appellate Inn of Court and a regular participant in the Georgetown Supreme Court Institute.
A summa cum laude graduate of Princeton University, Michael received his JD from the Yale Law School, where he served as Editor of The Yale Law Journal and Executive Editor of the Yale Law and Policy Review. Following law school, Michael clerked for Judge Michael Daly Hawkins on the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.