MLaw Professor joins Miller Canfield's International Disputes Group

Julian Davis Mortenson has joined Miller Canfield as Of Counsel to its International Disputes Group. He will continue as a full-time professor at the University of Michigan Law School.

“As a leading international law firm with business clients engaged in transactions around the world, it’s imperative that we offer the breadth of experience that Julian Mortenson brings. Our clients will benefit from his keen insights on every aspect of cross-border business structures and process. We’re delighted to add him to our team,” said Michael McGee, Miller Canfield CEO.

Mortenson brings to the firm extensive experience in both academia and private practice. Named by the law school as the 2015 recipient of the L. Hart Wright Award for Teaching Excellence, Mortenson is active in both international arbitration and domestic constitutional litigation. He has served as arbitrator, counsel, and expert witness in commercial and investor-state disputes under the ICC, ICSID, UNCITRAL, and VIAC rules, and has litigated complex transnational matters in the U.S. courts, including actions involving the enforcement of foreign law and foreign judgments. Other representative matters include his work as one of the principal drafters of the merits briefs in the landmark case Boumediene v. Bush, which secured the right of Guantanamo detainees to challenge their incarceration, and his role as lead counsel in Caspar v. Snyder, which required Michigan to recognize the marriages of more than 300 same-sex couples.

Prior to joining the Michigan Law School faculty, Professor Mortenson was an associate at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP in Washington D.C., and New York. He also served as a law clerk to Justice David Souter on the U.S. Supreme Court. Mortenson received his J.D., Order of the Coif, from Stanford Law School after earning a Bachelor of Arts, summa cum laude, at Harvard College. He lives in Ann Arbor.

“Our chief aim is excellence, and there is little question that Julian brings excellence to the firm,” said International Disputes Group Leader Frederick Acomb. In addition to Mortenson and Acomb, the International Disputes Group includes Professor Charles H. Brower II, Professor Troy L. Harris, Larry Saylor, Paul D. Hudson, and James Woolard. All of them actively work on the firm’s international disputes matters.

Miller Canfield’s International Disputes Group has presented and defended a wide range of international arbitration claims, conducted under most institutional rules, in every major region of the world. The Group also has a robust cross-border litigation practice. Drawing on its deep roots in Detroit, the center of the global automotive industry, the group’s mission is to be the preeminent midmarket international disputes group in the world in service of the global manufacturing industry.